NIGHT TRAIN
By:
January 25, 2026
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.
Pressing to its rails through the night the train speeds
Past hills, past streams, past tombs of the ancient dead,
Over bridges, making concrete pillars groan and shake,
Past waste land, past temples with peeling crumbling gates,
Past pools of black water where the frogs beat their drums,
Past the unrelieved darkness of the lockjawed farms,
Past a chilly little station to which no travellers come,
The platform laying open its nakedness, like sin.
By now the train’s screeching has woken a little group
Of stars, who find rifts in the clouds to dodge and peep.
“What is this thing up to,” the stars begin to wonder,
“That takes no rest at night, but shouts and snorts in anger?
“This snake-like creature, breathing fiery sparks,
Careless of danger, plunging through the murk,
“All its trust in two narrow lines, some kind of rails,
Mindful of the nightmarish burden it must haul?”
— Burden! These curious, good-hearted folk,
Who have set their minds at ease, and sprawl now asleep,
Pass to the train’s keeping their high or humble fates
And care not whether now they climb hills or circle lakes,
Nor whether in the forest monstrous birds curse and scream,
Nor whether the shining planets are marching to their doom;
All they want is peace now, to snore with hanging jaw —
Tomorrow they’ll arrive, grab their bags and off once more!
And that’s the way to be! For sorrow is bottomless;
You and I spinning here, no chance to take our ease,
Our eyes open wide, seeing all things clear and bright,
Yet what hope have we of ordering our fate?
Light, wisdom, beauty — how can we be so grand?
We like they are prisoners, bound by a single bond.
— c. 1929 (?). Found in translation in Twentieth Century Chinese poetry: An Anthology (1963), by Kai-yu Hsu (translator and editor).
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.