WARNING
By:
October 10, 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.
The Law that spins these toy-top worlds in
space,
Divides the opaque darkness from the day,
Directs the shining of each solar ray,
Guides and controls the stellar chariot race,
And holds the whirling universe in place—
Altho no particle may stop or stay—
This Law immutable, you may not sway,
Or modify, or alter by your grace . . .
Unfailingly the tides of ocean flow,
The giant oaks and modest pansies grow,
Inexorably following the deed
Comes, without haste and without pause,
the meed.
A tiny tendril creviced in the rock
In time will burst apart a granite block.
— Published on its own in Carolina Magazine, May 1928. But previously published in her collection The Widening Light (1922), where it is part III of “Three Sonnets.”
PS: A “meed” is a well-deserved reward.
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.