James Kenneth Stephen

James Kenneth Stephen (25 February 1859 – 3 February 1892) was an English poet, and tutor to Prince Albert Victor, eldest son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.

James Kenneth Stephen

Quotes

• To see Good Tennis! What divine joy
  Can fill our leisure, or our minds employ?
  Let other people play at other things;
  The King of Games is still the Game of Kings.
  • Parker's Piece.

• Will there never come a season
  Which shall rid us from the curse?
  Of a prose which knows no reason
  And an unmelodious verse:
  When the world shall cease to wonder
  At the genius of an Ass,
  And a boy's eccentric blunder
  Shall not bring success to pass:

  When mankind shall be delivered
  From the clash of magazines,
  And the inkstand shall be shivered
  Into countless smithereens:
  When there stands a muzzled stripling,
  Mute, beside a muzzled bore:
  When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
  And the Haggards Ride no more.

  • To R. K.

• I do not want to see that girl again:
  I did not like her: and I should not mind
  If she were done away with, killed, or ploughed.
  She did not seem to serve a useful end :
  And certainly she was not beautiful.
  • In the Backs.

• There were two good fellows I used to know.
  --How distant it all appears!
  We played together in football weather,
  And messed together for years:
  Now one of them's wed, and the other's dead
  So long that he's hardly missed
  Save by us, who messed with him years ago:
  But we're all in the old School List.
  • The Old School List.

• Republic of the West,
  Enlightened, free, sublime,
  Unquestionably best
  Production of our time.
  • England and America.

• In short, if your body or mind
  Or your soul or your purse come to grief,
  You need only get drunk, and you'll find
  Complete and immediate relief.
  • Drinking Song.