THE REVOLUTIONARY
By:
February 24, 2023
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 at them standing there in authority
The pale-faces,
As if it could have any effect any more.
Pale-face authority,
Caryatids,
Pillars of white bronze standing rigid, lest
the skies fall.
What a job they’ve got to keep it up.
Their poor, idealist foreheads naked
capitals
To the entablature of clouded heaven.
When the skies are going to fall, fall they
will
In a great chute and rush of débâcle
downwards.
Oh and I wish the high and super-gothic
heavens would come down now,
The heavens above, that we yearn to and
aspire to.
I do not yearn, nor aspire, for I am a blind
Samson.
And what is daylight to me that I should
look skyward?
Only I grope among you, pale-faces,
caryatids, as among a forest of pillars
that hold up the dome of high ideal
heaven
Which is my prison,
And all these human pillars of loftiness,
going stiff, metallic-stunned with the
weight of their responsibility
I stumble against them.
Stumbling-blocks, painful ones.
To keep on holding up this ideal civilisation
Must be excruciating: unless you stiffen
into metal, when it is easier to stand
stock rigid than to move.
This is why I tug at them, individually, with
my arm round their waist
The human pillars.
They are not stronger than I am, blind
Samson.
The house sways.
I shall be so glad when it comes down.
I am so tired of the limitations of their
Infinite.
I am so sick of the pretensions of the Spirit.
I am so weary of pale-face importance.
Am I not blind, at the round-turning mill?
Then why should I fear their pale faces?
Or love the effulgence of their holy light,
The sun of their righteousness?
To me, all faces are dark,
All lips are dusky and valved.
Save your lips, O pale-faces,
Which are slips of metal,
Like slits in an automatic-machine, you
columns of give-and-take.
To me, the earth rolls ponderously,
superbly
Coming my way without forethought or
afterthought.
To me, men’s footfalls fall with a dull, soft
rumble, ominous and lovely,
Coming my way.
But not your foot-falls, pale-faces,
They are a clicketing of bits of disjointed
metal
Working in motion.
To me, men are palpable, invisible
nearnesses in the dark
Sending out magnetic vibrations of
warning, pitch-dark throbs of invitation.
But you, pale-faces,
You are painful, harsh-surfaced pillars that
give off nothing except rigidity,
And I jut against you if I try to move, for you
are everywhere, and I am blind,
Sightless among all your visuality,
You staring caryatids.
See if I don’t bring you down, and all your
high opinion
And all your ponderous roofed-in erection
of right and wrong
Your particular heavens,
With a smash.
See if your skies aren’t falling!
And my head, at least, is thick enough to
stand it, the smash.
See if I don’t move under a dark and nude,
vast heaven
When your world is in ruins, under your
fallen skies.
Caryatids, pale-faces.
See if I am not Lord of the dark and moving
hosts
Before I die.
Florence.
— found in Birds, Beasts and Flowers: Poems (1923). First published in New Republic (Jan 19, 1921).
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: H.D.’s STARS WHEEL IN PURPLE | Clark Ashton Smith’s FROM PLANET UNTO PLANET WHIRLED | Anonymous’s ASTRONOMIC JOSH | Rudyard Kipling’s THE SECRET OF THE MACHINES | Randolph Bourne’s SABOTAGE | Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | Ford Madox Ford’s GREY MATTER | W.E. Henley’s A SONG OF SPEED | H.L. Mencken’s A BALLAD OF LOOKING | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Vachel Lindsay’s THE SCIENTIFIC ASPIRATION | Thomas Hardy’s EPITAPH FOR G.K. CHESTERTON | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | Charles M. Doughty’s THE CLIFFS | William Butler Yeats’s THE SECOND COMING | Guillaume Apollinaire’s THE LITTLE CAR | Archibald MacLeish’s MAN! | Max Beerbohm’s A SEQUELULA TO “THE DYNASTS” | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Michael Roberts’s NOTE ON Θ, Φ, and Ψ | D.H. Lawrence’s FUTURE WAR | Laurence Binyon’s NUMBERS | Frederik Pohl’s ELEGY TO A DEAD PLANET: LUNA | F.V. Branford’s FAREWELL TO MATHEMATICS | D.H. Lawrence’s THE EVENING LAND | Carl Sandburg’s MANUAL SYSTEM | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | D.H. Lawrence’s THE REVOLUTIONARY | Blaise Cendrar’s ORION | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Charles Buxton Going’s THE SONG OF STEEL | D.H. Lawrence’s UNDERNEATH | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Louis Untermeyer’s PORTRAIT OF A MACHINE | D.H. Lawrence’s BOMBARDMENT | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | D.H. Lawrence’s TO LET GO OR TO HOLD ON —? | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | W.J. Turner’s MISS AMERICA | Julian Huxley’s TO A DANCER | W.B. Yeats’s SAILING TO BYZANTIUM | John Collings Squire’s THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | Julian Huxley’s COSMIC DEATH | Robinson Jeffers’s SCIENCE | D.H. Lawrence’s SUBURBS ON A HAZY DAY | A.S. Eddington’s ONE THING IS CERTAIN | Rudyard Kipling’s THE TRADE | Emil Raymond’s TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE STAR | D.H. Lawrence’s THE TRIUMPH OF THE MACHINE | Marianne Moore’s IN THE DAYS OF PRISMATIC COLOR | Vachel Lindsay’s EUCLID | D.H. Lawrence’s GIVE US GODS | Alfred Noyes’s WATCHERS OF THE SKY | Edna St. Vincent Millay’s EUCLID ALONE | W.J. Turner’s IN TIME LIKE GLASS | Emma Rounds’s PLANE GEOMETRY | Robert Grant’s THE SUPERMAN | D.H. Lawrence’s THE THIRD THING | Ralph Milne Farley’s THE END OF THE WORLD | Robinson Jeffers’s ROAN STALLION | A.S. Eddington’s INFINITY | Karel Čapek’s WHAT OUR AGE HAS DONE | D.H. Lawrence’s ROBOT POEMS | Mina Loy’s LUNAR BAEDEKER | John Lehmann’s THIS EXCELLENT MACHINE | Jean Toomer’s HER LIPS ARE COPPER WIRE | D.H. Lawrence’s RELATIVITY | Clark Ashton Smith’s AFTERWARDS | D.H. Lawrence’s SPACE | Ronald Ross’s THE ANNIVERSARY | Rudyard Kipling’s MACDONOUGH’S SONG | Robert Bridges’ THE TESTAMENT OF BEAUTY | Clark Ashton Smith’s THE STAR-TREADER | Archibald MacLeish’s EPISTLE TO BE LEFT TO THE EARTH | D.H. Lawrence’s LET US BE MEN | Michael Roberts’s MIDNIGHT | William Stanley Braithwaite’s DEL CASCAR | F.V. Branford’s THE MOON | A.S. Eddington’s “THERE ONCE WAS A BREATHY BABOON” | Michael Roberts’s PERSPECTIVE | Arthur Schnitzler’s LEINBACH’S PROOF | Michael Roberts’s ROCKS ARE IMMUTABLE | F.V. Branford’s MASTER CELLS | Clark Ashton Smith’s THE NEMESIS OF SUNS | D.H. Lawrence’s DARK SATANIC MILLS | William Empson’s LETTER I | Amy Lowell’s MIDDAY AND AFTERNOON | D.H. Lawrence’s THE GULF | Wallace Stevens’s FABLIAU OF FLORIDA | Kenneth Rexroth’s “HEAVEN IS FULL OF DEFINITE STARS…” | Leslie Pinckney Hill’s ARMAGEDDON | William Stanley Braithwaite’s DISTANCES | Lucian B. Watkins’s SAN FRANCISCO’S 18th OF APRIL (1906) | D.H. Lawrence’s HOLD BACK! | C. Day Lewis’s TRANSITIONAL POEM | Wallace Stevens’s THE IDEA OF A COLONY | D.H. Lawrence’s MEN LIKE GODS | Valery Bryusov’s THE DAYS SHALL COME OF FINAL DESOLATION | Amy Lowell’s A COMPARISON | D.H. Lawrence’s MEN AND MACHINES | Herbert Read’s MUTATIONS OF THE PHŒNIX | T.E. Hulme’s CINDERS | T.S. Eliot’s THE WASTE LAND | Hugh MacDiarmid’s STONY LIMITS | Herbert Read’s THE RETREAT | D.H. Lawrence’s SOULS TO SAVE | Laurence Binyon’s THE ZEPPELIN | Herbert Read’s THE ANALYSIS OF LOVE | Amy Lowell’s VENICE AGAIN | Hugh MacDiarmid’s THALAMUS | Paul Valéry’s THE YOUNG FATE | Herbert Read’s EQUATION | William Empson’s INVITATION TO JUNO | W.W. Gibson’s WINDOWS | Herbert Read’s THE INNOCENT EYE | W.W. Gibson’s THE MACHINE | C. Day Lewis’s FROM FEATHERS TO IRON | W.H. Auden’s IN THE LAST OF THE OLD YEAR | Michael Roberts’s SIRIUS B | Hart Crane’s LINES SENT TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ | Robert Garioch’s TRANSLATIONS FROM AN UNWRITTEN POEM | R.S. Thomas’s AT IT | Louis MacNeice’s REFLECTIONS | Osbert Sitwell’s THE END | Valery Bryusov’s THREE APPLES | George C. Wallis’s THE CITIES | Gordon Bottomley’s TO IRON-FOUNDERS AND OTHERS | Valery Bryusov’s DUSK | Edith Sitwell’s THE LADY WITH THE SEWING MACHINE | Vachel Lindsay’s THE HORRID VOICE OF SCIENCE | Wallace Stevens’s “RATIONALISTS, WEARING SQUARE HATS” | Robinson Jeffers’s TRIAD | Archibald MacLeish’s SIGNATURE FOR TEMPO | Ambrose Beirce’s THE PASSING SHOW | Valery Bryusov’s THE COMING HUNS | & more to come.