THE TURBINE
By:
December 10, 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.
Look, my friend,
Behold a sign! What is this crystal sphere —
This little bulb of glass I lightly lift,
This iridescent bubble a child might blow
Out of its brazen pipe to hold the sun —
What strange toy is it? In my hand it lies
Cold and inert, its puny artery —
That curling cobweb film-ashen and dead.
But see a twist or two — let it but touch
The hem, far trailing, of my lady’s robe,
And lo, the burning life-blood of the stars
Leaps to its heart, that glows against the
dark,
Kindling the world.
Even so I touch her garment,
Her servant through the quiet night; and
thus
I lay my hand upon the Pleiades
And feel their throb of fire. Grandly she
gives
To me unworthy; woman inscrutable,
Scatters her splendors through my darkness, leads me
Far out into the workshop of the worlds.
There I can feel those infinite energies
Our little earth just gnaws at through the
ether,
And see the light our sunshine hides. Out
there
Close to the heart of life I am at peace.
— An excerpt from “The Turbine.” From Monroe’s 1914 collection, You and I. However, the collection includes poems first published as early as 1905.
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.