Compiling Stylus Files Without Static Middleware

I'm converting an Express application to forgo the use express.static middleware, relying on the reverse proxy to handle serving static assets.

I'm attempting to use the stylus.middleware method to compile down these files when the server starts, however it never actually compiles the files to CSS.

app.use(stylus.middleware({
  serve : false,
  src: __dirname + "/views",
  dest: __dirname + "/public",
  compress: (env == "production" ? true : false),
  cache: (env == "production" ? true : false),
  sourcemap: true
}));

I'm assuming this is because the server never gets requests for those files? I could write a utility that compiles like I want, I just feel like there can be a solution here.

Also no build systems or package manager answers, please.