Protus

Protus

Original Text
Robert Browning, Men and Women (1855). 2 vols. Rev. 1863.
2Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,
3Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
5One loves a baby face, with violets there,
6Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
7As those were all the little locks could bear.
8Now read here. "Protus ends a period
9"Of empery beginning with a god;
11"Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant:
12"And if he quickened breath there, 't would like fire
13"Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.
14"A fame that he was missing, spread afar:
15"The world, from its four corners, rose in war,
16"Till he was borne out on a balcony
17"To pacify the world when it should see.
18"The captains ranged before him, one, his hand
19"Made baby points at, gained the chief command.
20"And day by day more beautiful he grew
21"In shape, all said, in feature and in hue,
22"While young Greek sculptors gazing on the child
23"Became, with old Greek sculpture, reconciled.
24"Already sages laboured to condense
25"In easy tomes a life's experience:
26"And artists took grave counsel to impart
27"In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art-
28"To make his graces prompt as blossoming
29"Of plentifully-watered palms in spring:
30"Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne,
31"For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone,
32"And 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,
37"A blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved
38"The Empire from its fate the year before,-
39"Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore
40"The same for six years, (during which the Huns
41"Kept off their fingers from us) till his sons
42"Put something in his liquor "-and so forth.
43Then a new reign. Stay-"Take at its just worth "
44(Subjoins an annotator) "what I give
45"As hearsay. Some think, John let Protus live
46"And slip away. 'T is said, he reached man's age
47"At some blind northern court; made, first a page,
48"Then tutor to the children; last, of use
49"About the hunting stables. I deduce
50"He wrote the little tract 'On worming dogs,'
51"Whereof the name in sundry catalogues
52"Is extant yet. A Protus of the race
53"Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,-
54"And, 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!

Notes

1] The busts, the Chronicle, and the persons in this poem are all fictitious. Back to Line
4] Loric. Coat of mail. Back to Line
10] Byzant. Constantinople, the story deals with the period of the later Empire. Back to Line
36] Pannonian. Pannonia was a province on the Danube. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1855
RPO poem Editors
W. J. Alexander; William Hall Clawson
RPO Edition
RP (1916), p. 362; RPO 1997.