James Brunton Stephens Poems

Hark how the tremulous night-wind is passing in joy-laden sighs;
Soft through my window it comes, like the fanning of pinions angelic,
   Whispering to cease from myself, and look out on the infinite skies.
...

The night was creeping on the ground;
She crept and did not make a sound
Until she reached the tree, and then
She covered it, and sole again
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De mortuis nil ni-
Si bonum: R.I.P.:—
No more upbraid him:—
Nay, rather plead his cause
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Said the Preacher “All is Vanity!”—appending as a reason
That the things we find our pleasure in are bound to pass and pall;
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Maker of earth and sea,
What shall we render Thee?
All things are Thine!
Ours but from day to day
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THE scene is the Southern Hemisphere;
The time — oh, any time of the year
Will do as well as another; say June,
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Brown was weeping; likewise cursing; and with amplitude of reason;
For a letter had been handed him that very afternoon
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It little profits that, an idle man,
On this worn arch, in sight of wasted halls,
I mope, a solitary pelican,
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Through what strange winding ways of circumstance,
Through what conspiracies of time and chance,
By what long chain of hands, from his who pressed
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I.
Biggs was missing: Biggs had vanished; all the town was in a ferment;
For if ever man was looked to for an edifying end,
With due mortuary outfit, and a popular interment,
...