THE END

By: Osbert Sitwell
September 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.

Round the great ruins crawl those things
     of slime; —
Green ruins lichenous and scarred by
     moss,—
An evil lichen that proclaims world doom,
Like blood dried a brown upon a dead
     man’s face.
And nothing moves save those
     monstrosities
Armoured and grey and of a monster size.

But now, a thing passed through the
     cloying air
With flap and clatter of its scaly wings —
As if the whole world echoed from some
     storm.
One scarce could see it in this dim green
     light
Till suddenly it swooped and made a dart
And swept away one of those things of
     slime,
Just as a hawk might sweep upon its prey.
Then there were horrid noises, cries of pain
Which only made one feel a deep disgust.
It seems as if the light grows dimmer yet —
No radiance from the dreadful green
     above,
Only a lustrous light or iridescence
As if from off a carrion-fly, — surrounds
That vegetation which is never touched
By any breeze. The air is thick and brings
The tainted subtle sweetness of decay. —
Where, yonder, lies the noisome
     river-course,
There shows a faintly phosphorescent
     glow. —
Long writhing bodies fall and twist and rise,
And one can hear them playing in the mud.
Upon the ruined walls there gleam and
     shine
The track of those grey vast
     monstrosities —
As some gigantic snail had crawled along.

All round the shining bushes waver lines
Suggesting shadows, slight and grey, but
     full
Of that which makes one nigh to dead with
     fear.

Watch how those awful shadows culminate
And dance in one long wish to hurt the
     world.

A world that now is past all agony!

— From the second Wheels anthology, published 1917 by Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell Sitwell.

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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.