TO-DAY

By: Angela Morgan
August 18, 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.

Antonio Sant’Elia’s “The New City — House Stairs with External Lifts” (1914)

To be alive in such an age!
With every year a lightning page
Turned in the world’s great wonder-book
Whereon the leaning nations look.
When men speak strong for brotherhood,
For peace and universal good;
When miracles are everywhere,
And every inch of common air
Throbs a tremendous prophecy
Of greater marvels yet to be.
Oh, thrilling age!
Oh, willing age!
When steel and stone and rail and rod
Become the utterance of God,
A trump to shout his thunder through,
Proclaiming all that man may do.

To be alive in such an age!
When man, impatient of his cage,
Thrills to the soul’s immortal rage
For conquest — reaches goal on goal,
Travels the earth from pole to pole,
Garners the tempests and the tides,
And on a dream triumphant rides.
When, hid within a lump of clay,
A light more terrible than day
Proclaims the presence of that Force
Which hurls the planets on their course.
Oh, age with wings!
Oh, age that flings
A challenge to the very sky
Where endless realms of conquest lie!
When earth, on tiptoe, strives to hear
The message of a sister sphere,
Yearning to reach the cosmic wires
That flash Infinity’s desires.

To be alive in such an age!
That thunders forth its discontent
With futile creed and sacrament,
Yet craves to utter God’s intent,
Seeing beneath the world’s unrest
Creation’s huge, untiring quest,
And through Tradition’s broken crust
The flame of Truth’s triumphant thrust;
Below the seething thought of man
The push of a stupendous plan.
Oh, age of strife!
Oh, age of life!
When Progress rides her chariot high
And on the borders of the sky
The signals of the century
Proclaim the things that are to be —
The rise of woman to her place,
The coming of a nobler race.

To be alive in such an age!
To live to it!
To give to it!
Rise, soul, from thy despairing knees.
What if thy lips have drunk the lees?
The passion of a larger claim
Will put thy puny grief to shame.
Fling forth thy sorrow to the wind
And link thy hope with humankind;
Breathe the world-thought, do the world-deed,
Think hugely of thy brother’s need.
And what thy woe, and what thy weal?
Look to the work the times reveal!

Give thanks with all thy flaming heart,
Crave but to have in it a part.
Give thanks and clasp thy heritage —
To be alive in such an age!

— from The Hour Has Struck: A War Poem, and Other Poems (1914). I’m not sure if it was published previously.

Not exactly good writing. But the poem touches on so many proto-sf tropes!

Wellsian utopia: “When men speak strong for brotherhood,/For peace and universal good”
Overcoming of distance: “Travels the earth from pole to pole”
Marie Curie’s discoveries, atomic power: “When, hid within a lump of clay, / A light more terrible than day / Proclaims the presence of that Force / Which hurls the planets on their course.”
Flight and interplanetary travel: “Oh, age that flings / A challenge to the very sky / Where endless realms of conquest lie!”
Communication with… other planets? Other dimensions? Spirits? “When earth, on tiptoe, strives to hear / The message of a sister sphere, / Yearning to reach the cosmic wires / That flash Infinity’s desires.”
Triumph of scientific enquiry: “And through Tradition’s broken crust / The flame of Truth’s triumphant thrust”
Gender equality: “The rise of woman to her place”
Homo superior? “The coming of a nobler race.”

***

TO-DAY

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