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 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,                        10

   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                          20

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

   While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the child,

   Became with old Greek sculpture 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,                30

   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                  40

   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,'                   50

   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!