Men and Women (Browning)/Volume 2/Protus
PROTUS.
Among these latter busts we count by scores,Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breastOne loves a baby face, with violets there,Violets instead of laurel in the hair,As those were all the little locks could bear.
Now read here. "Protus ends a periodOf empery beginning with a god:Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant;Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant. And if he quickened breath there, 'twould like firePantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.A fame that he was missing, spread afar―The world, from its four corners, rose in war,Till he was borne out on a balconyTo pacify the world when it should see.The captains ranged before him, one, his handMade baby points at, gained the chief command.And day by day more beautiful he grewIn shape, all said, in feature and in hue,While young Greek sculptors gazing on the childWere, so, with old Greek sculpture, reconciled.Already sages laboured to condenseIn easy tomes a life's experience:And artists took grave counsel to impartIn one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art—To make his graces prompt as blossomingOf plentifully-watered palms in spring:Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne, For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone,And mortals love the letters of his name."
—Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still the same.New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to sayHow that same year, on such a month and day,"John the Pannonian, groundedly believedA blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprievedThe Empire from its fate the year before,—Came, had a mind to take the crown, and woreThe same for six years, (during which the HunsKept off their fingers from us) till his sonsPut something in his liquor"—and so forth.Then a new reign. Stay—"Take at its just worth"(Subjoins an annotator) "what I giveAs hearsay. Some think John let Protus liveAnd slip away. 'Tis said, he reached man's ageAt some blind northern court; made first a page,Then, tutor to the children—last, of useAbout the hunting-stables. I deduce He wrote the little tract 'On worming dogs,'Whereof the name in sundry cataloguesIs extant yet. A Protus of the RaceIs rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,—And if the same, he reached senility."
Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eyeGross jaw and griped lips do what granite canTo give you the crown-grasper. What a man!