THE MOTHER
By:
February 11, 2025
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 Spirit of the Age.
I heard another fool with: “Time shall come
When the tired human brain,
That now already reels,
Shall utterly refuse to face again
The turmoil and the hum
Of all these wheels and wheels and wheels
and wheels and wheels,
This clattering of feet
And hurrying no-whither; deem it sweet
To lie among the grasses,
Where no more shadow is than of the
cloud that passes
Beneath the sun.” Another squeaked of
strife:
Of cataclysms, plagues; and slackening grip
on life,
And pictured for us street on street on
street
Re-echoing to the feet
Of one sole, panic-stricken passenger;
Pictured my houses roofless to the air,
The windows glassless, doors with ruined
locks,
The owlet and the fox
Sole harbourers there;
The only sounds hawks’ screaming, plover’s
shriek
Above the misted swamps; the rivers burst
Their banks and sweep, athirst,
My rotting City…. Horrid! … Mother speak;
Speak, mother, speak, who are so old and
wise.
The Little Blades of Grass (tittering).
Ho, ho! ho, ho!
The braggart groweth tremulous.
The Little Grains of Sand and of Dust.
Hallo! hallo—o—o!
He is afraid of us.
The Spirit of the Age.
D’you think that I am frighted by these lies ?
Old Dotard, I…
I rule; am come to stay
For ever and a day.
[…]
The Mother.
Son: when I turn in my slumber,
Your cities without number
Shall fall… There shall remain upon the
ground
Rubble and rubbish; a rising and settling of
dust all around,
Here and there a mound….
And the grass will come a-creeping,
And the sands come sifting, sweeping,
Down the winds and up the current,
Dry and dead and curst, abhorrent.
Grass for the cities of the plains and of the
hills: sand and bitter dust for the cities
of the shore.
Little one, I who am old, hid all those
strivings of yore,
Little one, I old and grey,
Bid you play,
Wrestle and worry and play in the folds of
my dress,
Till you tire, and the fire of your passions
fails in your earth-weariness.
— an excerpt from “The Mother: A Song-Drama,” in Face of the Night: A Second Series of Poem for Pictures (1904, as by Ford M. Hueffer). A dialogue of sorts between The Spirit of the Age and the Mother (that is, Nature), with a chorus formed of The Little Blades of Grass and The Little Grains of Sand and of Dust.
The scene is described like so: “Just outside a great city. Battalions of staring, dun-coloured, brick houses, newly finished, with vacant windows, bluish slate roofs and yellow chimney pots, march on the fields which are blackened and shrouded with fog. Innumerable lines of railway disappear among them, gleaming in parallel curves. Fog signals sound and three trains pass on different levels; the lights in their windows an orange blur. A continuous hooting of railway engines. THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, leaning on the brick parapet of the upper embankment, speaks towards THE MOTHER, who is unseen in the fog above the fields.”
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.