Protus by Robert Browning — Read

Among these latter busts we count by scores, / Half-emperors and quarter-emperors. / Bach with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest, / Lorie 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, / Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant: / And if he quickened breath there, 't would 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 / Became with old Greek sculpture reconciled. / Already sages labored 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."