ZEPPELIN NIGHTS

By: D.H. Lawrence
October 28, 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.

        

Now, will you play all night!
        Come in, my mother says.
Look in the sky, at the bright
        Moon all ablaze!
Look at the shaking, white
        Searchlight rays!

Tonight they’re coming!
        It’s a full moon!
When you hear them humming
        Very soon,
You’ll stop that blooming
        Tune —

[Children sing on unheeding :]
        Sally go round the sun!
        Sally go round the moon!
        Sally go round the chimney-pots
          On Sunday afternoon!

— Found in Poetry magazine (July 1919). Part of a sequence of twelve poems by Lawrence collectively titled “War Films.”

***

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.