UNREST
By:
May 22, 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.
A fierce unrest seethes at the core
Of all existing things:
It was the eager wish to soar
That gave the gods their wings.
From what flat wastes of cosmic slime,
And stung by what quick fire,
Sunward the restless races climb! —
Men risen out of mire!
There throbs through all the worlds that are
This heart-beat hot and strong
And shaken systems, star by star,
Awake and glow in song.
But for the urge of this unrest
These joyous spheres are mute;
But for the rebel in his breast
Had man remained a brute.
When baffled lips demanded speech,
Speech trembled into birth—
(One day the lyric word shall reach
From earth to laughing earth.) —
When man’s dim eyes demanded light,
The light he sought was born —
His wish, a Titan, scaled the height
And flung him back the morn!
From deed to dream, from dream to deed,
From daring hope to hope,
The restless wish, the instant need,
Still lashed him up the slope!
***
I sing no governed firmament,
Cold, ordered, regular —
I sing the stinging discontent
That leaps from star to star!
— Found in Modern American Poetry (revised and enlarged edition), ed. Louis Untermeyer, 1919 and 1921. Not sure what year it first was published.
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.