THE SONG OF STEEL

By: Charles Buxton Going
March 12, 2023

A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.

Yea, art thou lord, O Man, since Tubal Cain
Brought me into being, white and torn with
pain —
Wrung me, in fierce, hot agony of birth,
Writhing from out of the womb of mother
earth.

Art thou, then, king, and did I make thee
     lord,
Clothe thee in mail and gird thee with the
     sword,
Give thee the plough, the ax, the whirring
     wheel —
To every subtle craft its tools of steel?

Look! We have slain the forests, thou
     and I —
Soiled the bright streams and murked the
     very sky;
Crushed the glad hills and shocked the
     quiet stars
With roaring factories and clanging cars!

Thou builder of machines, who dost not
     see!
That which thou mad’st to drive, is driving
     thee —
Ravening, tireless, pitiless its strain
For thy last ounce of work from hand and
     brain.

Are thy sons princes? Hard-wrung serfs!
     They give
Toil’s utmost dregs for the bare chance to
     live;
They dig and delve and strive with
     sweat-cursed brow
In forge and shop. Master? Nay! Thrall art
     thou!

Fool! Serving, I have slaved thee. Master
Fool!
To forge the sword, nor know the sword
should rule;
To make the engine, blind that it must lead
Fast and yet faster on the race of greed.

I, Steel, am King — thy king in more than
     name!
Lo, I am Moloch, crowned and throned in
     flame,
Holding thee slave by lust of thy desire —
Calling thy first-born to me through the
     fire!

— Charles Buxton Going, “The Song of Steel” (1907), and in his 1909 collection Star-glow and Song.

Harper’s Monthly (November 1907)

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THE SONG OF STEEL

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