“TIME IS A MARVEL…”
By:
July 17, 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.
“If seed must fall on shallow soil
Some will pluck the fruit of my song and
spoil
Or better, — who knows? — delights of the
mind
In far-off echoes, mayhap refined,
Perchance made coarse, thus, some may
sing
After my voice, remembering:—
‘They trample my pearls, but what care I,
If they make of this earth a filthy sty?
Is it grief of mine if their sodden brains
Tingle with joy when my soul complains?
The ancient stars are untroubled yet,
And they shall remember when men forget;
Our tears are not all of this gray world’s
woe,
The seas know grief we shall never know…
Vast is the web and splendidly spun,
Larger than us is the lordly Sun:
Time is a marvel no man designed,
Vast above time is the living mind:
Though for some the stars are cold and far
And men more precious than any star,
Till man towers over all Time, supreme
Over stars as sparks in his flaming
dream —
Imagining Time with an infinite might
Makes all things for man’s delight —
Though some false prophets teach these
things
They are not in the song our compeer
sings’…
Foolish or wise? not I will say,
And each may travel his chosen way;
He may find black hell in his own black
heart,
He shall not find me, for I dwell apart.”
— Excerpt from “The Singer,” a very long and much-footnoted poem in Eric Temple Bell’s 1916 collection of that title.
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.