NOVA

By: Robinson Jeffers
November 20, 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.

That Nova was a moderate star like our
     good sun; it stored no
doubt a little more than it spent
Of heat and energy until the increasing
     tension came to the
trigger-point
Of a new chemistry; then what was already
     flaming found a new
manner of flaming ten-thousandfold
More brightly for a brief time; what was a
     pin-point fleck on a
sensitive plate at the great telescope’s
Eye-piece now shouts down the steep night
     to the naked eye,
a nine-day super-star.

      It is likely our moderate
Father the sun will some time put off his
     nature for a similar
glory. The earth would share it; these tall
Green trees would become a moment’s
     torches and vanish, the
oceans would explode into invisible steam,
The ships and the great whales fall through
     them like flaming
meteors into the emptied abysm, the six
     mile
Hollows of the Pacific sea-bed might smoke
     for a moment. Then
the earth would be like the pale proud
     moon,
Nothing but vitrified sand and rock would
     be left on earth. This
is a probable death-passion
For the sun’s planets; we have no
     knowledge to assure us it may
not happen at any moment of time.

Meanwhile the sun shines wisely
     and warm, trees flutter green
in the wind, girls take their clothes off
To bathe in the cold ocean or to hunt love;
     they stand laughing
in the white foam, they have beautiful
Shoulders and thighs, they are beautiful
     animals, all life is beautiful.
We cannot be sure of life for one moment;
We can, by force and self-discipline, by
     many refusals and a few
assertions, in the teeth of fortune assure
     ourselves
Freedom and integrity in life or integrity in
     death. And we know
that the enormous invulnerable beauty of
     things
Is the face of God, to live gladly in its
     presence, and die without
grief or fear knowing it survives us.

— An excerpt from Such Counsels You Gave to Me (1935–1938), right at the outer limit of the Radium Age era.

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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.