Protus

8Now, read here. "Protus ends a period

9Of empery beginning with a god;

10Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant,

11Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant:

12And if he quickened breath there, 'twould like fire

13Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.

14A fame that he was missing spread afar:

15The world from its four corners, rose in war,

16Till he was borne out on a balcony

17To pacify the world when it should see.

18The captains ranged before him, one, his hand

19Made baby points at, gained the chief command.

20And day by day more beautiful he grew

21In shape, all said, in feature and in hue,

22While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the child,

23Became with old Greek sculpture reconciled.

24Already sages laboured to condense

25In easy tomes a life's experience:

26And artists took grave counsel to impart

27In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art,

28To make his graces prompt as blossoming

29Of plentifully-watered palms in spring:

30Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne,

31For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone,

32And mortals love the letters of his name."

33 — Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still the same.

34New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to say

35How that same year, on such a month and day,

36"John the Pannonian, groundedly believed

37A blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved

38The Empire from its fate the year before,

39Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore

40The same for six years (during which the Huns

41Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons

42Put something in his liquor" — and so forth.

43Then a new reign. Stay — "Take at its just worth"

44(Subjoins an annotator) "what I give

45As hearsay. Some think, John let Protus live

46And slip away. 'Tis said, he reached man's age

47At some blind northern court; made, first a page,

48Then tutor to the children; last, of use

49About the hunting-stables. I deduce

50He wrote the little tract 'On worming dogs,'

51Whereof the name in sundry catalogues

52Is extant yet. A Protus of the race

53Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,

54And if the same, he reached senility."

55Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye,

56Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can

57To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!