May 22, 1925

Irish novelist and poet James Stephens read from his work and spoke about the several “speeds” in verse—those of mountains, birds, boys, girls, anger, joy and the sea. “Then,” commented The Miscellany News, “there is the speed of the boy of eighteen who is constantly falling in and out of love. And his speed is shown in a little conversation with a bee. It was a short poem and Mr. Stephens remarked that ‘if a poem may be said more briefly in prose, it is a bad poem.’…. It was with difficulty that he managed to escape from the crowd of those seeking autographs.”

The author of The Crock of Gold (1912), The Demi-Gods (1914) and Deirdre (1923), Stephens published In the Land of Youth in 1924. He visited Vassar again in October 1933.