THE DAYS SHALL COME OF FINAL DESOLATION
By:
May 9, 2024
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.
The days shall come of final desolation,
All of a sudden shall earth’s forces fail;
Then shall the last of wretched generations
Move to the South where sun and warmth
prevail.
Our mighty towers, bastions and cities
Shall hear the dreaded voice of Judgement
Day,
Light shall not rise triumphant in the
wilderness,
No train shall thunder raise on its steel
way.
Fine edifices shall be dimmed by ivy,
Grass weave a carpet over every stone,
Snake nests in city squares breed swarms
of vipers,
In palaces shall lions make their home.
But in these days of final desolation
One man of courage shall exclaim: “I know!”
And he’ll disturb the sleep of old
foundations
And light upon their silent gloom he’ll
throw.
Wild beasts will hear upon the mossy
highways
Man’s footsteps in the silence loud and
clear
And on their hinges house-doors will be
sighing
And bright-lit rows of statues will appear.
Reading the names of markets and of
temples
And from inscriptions learning who was
who,
The inmost rooms of libraries he’ll enter
And bring our books’ old secrets into view.
And day and night he’ll anxiously go delving
Into our dusty prophesies of old,
Our search for truth, our dreams of God
and heaven,
The songs in which the joys of earth we
told.
My welcome friend of unknown future
ages,
You’re shaken by the past you gaze upon!
I beg you heed my message on these
pages:
I lived, I thought, and then… like mist, was
gone…
— An 1899 poem. Translated by Peter Tempest
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.