presager

Writers who manage big, showy debuts are often one-trick ponies, but Gibson has an inexhaustible supply of tricks, new stories and new ways of telling them that make him the most consistent predictor of our present, contextualizer of our pasts and presager of our possible futures.

The white owl entered the casement high, O'er the brow of the dying I saw it fly; Presager of death!

A filthy bird “Becoming;—constant presager of woe; “An owl inactive; omen dire to man.

For, with the constant and unvarying light of the Holy Bible, that illuminated lexicon of the sweet Beyond, and of the approaches thereto—that trusty talisman of all hopeful hearts—that competent counselor of the wisest and the best—that inspirer of joy and satisfaction born of no other book—that precious presager of immortal life beyond the river—that divine guide to faith and practice, can by no means fail in the ultimate working out of its sublime purposes.

And one conspirator leaped up Amid the clash of tinkling spoons And poured into a protose cup His helping of stewed prunes; And, blood-red presager of doom, Half a tomato hissed across the room.