THE CITIES
By:
June 15, 2025
A series dedicated to poems, published c. 1900–1935, the Radium Age sf-adjacent themes of which include: dystopia and utopia, far-out mathematics and the fourth dimension, Afro-futurism, catastrophe, future war, new technologies, scientific breakthrough, dehumanization, cosmic awe, disenchantment and unseen forces, unknowable aliens and singularity. Research and selection by Joshua Glenn; thematic index here.
They shall sink under water,
They shall rise up again:
They shall be peopled
By millions of men.
Cleansed of their scarlet,
Absolved of their sin,
They shall be like crystal
All stainless within.
Paris and Babel,
London and Tyre,
Reborn from the darkness,
Shall sparkle like fire.
From the folk who throng in
Their gardens and towers
Shall be blown fragrance
Sweeter than flowers.
Faery shall dance in
The streets of the town,
And from sky headlands
The gods looking down.
— Found in The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936), ed. W.B. Yeats.
I believe the poem is also in Russell’s collection Enchantment (1930).
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.