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Robert Browning - Protus
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Among these latter busts we count by scores,
Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,
Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
Loricand low-browed Gorgon on the breast,—-
One 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 period
``Of 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 fire
``Pantingly 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 balcony
``To pacify the world when it should see.
``The captains ranged before him, one, his hand
``Made baby points at, gained the chief command.
``And day by day more beautiful he grew
``In shape, all said, in feature and in hue,
``While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the child,
``Because with old Greek sculptore reconciled.
``Already sages laboured to condense
``In easy tomes a life`s experience:
``And artists took grave counsel to impart
``In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art—-
``To make his graces prompt as blossoming
``Of 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 say
How that same year, on such a month and day,
``John the Pannonian, groundedly believed
``A Blacksmith`s bastard, whose hard hand reprieved
``The Empire from its fate the year before,—-
``Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore
``The same for six years (during which the Huns
``Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons
``Put something in his liquor``—-and so forth.
Then a new reign.  Stay—-``Take at its just worth``
(Subjoins an annotator) ``what I give
``As hearsay.  Some think, John let Protus live
``And slip away.  `Tis said, he reached man`s age
``At some blind northern court; made, first a page,
``Then tutor to the children; last, of use
``About the hunting-stables.  I deduce
``He wrote the little tract `On worming dogs,`
``Whereof the name in sundry catalogues
``Is extant yet.  A Protus of the race
``Is 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 eye,
Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can
To give you the crown-grasper.  What a man!
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