TO LOVERS OF EARTH
By:
August 4, 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.
Give over to high things the fervent
thought
You waste on Earth; let down the righteous
bar
Against a wayward peace too dearly bought
Upon this pale and passion-frozen star.
Sweethearts and friends, are they not
loyal? Far
More fickle, false, perverse, far more
unkind,
Is Earth to those who give her heart and
mind.
And you whose lusty youth her snares
intrigue,
Who glory in her seas, swear by her clouds,
With Age, man’s foe, Earth ever is in league.
Time resurrects her even while he crowds
Your bloom to dust, and lengthens out
your shrouds
A day’s length or a year’s. She will be young
When your last cracked and quivering note
is sung.
She will remain the Earth, sufficient still
Though you are gone, and with you that
rare loss
That vanishes with your bewildered will;
And there shall flame no red, indignant
cross
For you, no quick white scar of wrath
emboss
The sky, no blood drip from a wounded
moon,
And not a single star chime out of tune.
— The poem’s full title is “To Lovers of Earth: Fair Warning.” Published February 1927 in Harper’s Magazine, and in Cullen’s 1927 collection Copper Sun.
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.