PASSION
By:
April 19, 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.
When I look back
On days already lived
I am content.
For I have laughed
With the dew of morn,
The calm of night;
With the dawn of youth
And spring’s bright days.
Mid-summer’s bloom
And autumn’s ripening glory
My youth rejoiced.
And when winter bleak
Spread melancholy ’round
I still smiled on.
And I have loved
With quivering arms that
Clung, and throbbing breast–
With all the white-hot blood
Of mating’s flaming urge.
My cool, white soul
Has oft fared forth
In Astral ways,
for none may lag
When star dust hides the earth.
The wing of dreams
Have swept me up
To touch my feed on cloud
And wander where none
But souls dare climb.
— Published in the newspaper Negro World, April 15, 1922
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.