Space Tides: A Prophecy

Grady McMurtry

January 1946

The roar of space winds pouring o’er

The star hung cataracts of night

Has thundered on the sapphire shore

Of Orion. And in the light

Of clustered suns the men of Earth

Have heard this song celestial

Have stopped their labors, and their mirth,

Looking back to where, terrestrial,

Our mother planet swings in peace

Around her parent sun of old

And in those gyres that never cease

The story of our life is told.

From here the race of Man has sprung

To conquer space and claim the stars,

With fire atomic as the rung

He leaped the chasmed isobars

Between the worlds! From Him there came

The Cosmic Engineers who spanned

The stellar deep with ships of flame

Who saw galactic empires planned

For all of time. And so they dreamed

To throw the outposts of the Race

Beyond the farthest stars that gleamed

Upon the outer rim of space.

Hull down the ranging cruisers ride

The star wind o’er the Pleiades,

The space tanned mariners may stride

Their quarter-decks, or stand at ease

Along the bridge. While on patrol

Space borne torpedoes of the deep

Trans-stellar spaces gently roll

And feel the space tides as they leap

The curving parsects. Through the roar

Of stellar seas their orbits run

And close hauled clippers drive before

The blast of an exploding sun

That ripples space. And in the holds

Of merchant argosies are gems

From Centaurus; strange fungoid molds,

Monstrosities with many limbs

From Aldebaran; by the tons

Uranium and all its ores;

The priceless commerce of the suns

Consigned to Earth from foreign shores!

The cold, dry wind of outer space

That sweeps a way between the stars

Has fanned Capella’s flaming face

And stirred the sanguine sands of Mars

And I would ride that dark simoon

With the Corsair avatars of old

In racing shells that plunge the flume

Of interstellar space. Behold

The orange flame of Foamlhaut’s

From far below the Median Deep,

And stand the watch with astronauts

Who time the light years as they sweep

Across the universe. Who know

How wheeling galaxies will strain

The spatial curve. What storm may grow

A million years before they gain

The strength of cosmic hurricanes.

Such cyclone vortices as these,

Light years across, have fanned the vanes

Of stations anchored in the seas

That wash Polaris. And the spawn

Of this space warping typhoon wind

Are fiery molecules whole drawn

From some sub-ether. So they send

Another nebula to swirl

Across the strained and troubled void.

A cloud of new born stars to whirl

And lure the questing anthropoid.

The power of atomic might

Stripped from the ore uranium,

Where neucleons are whipped in white

Heat from bedrock neutronium,

Has fueled the navies of high space,

And out in that sidereal sleet

A mighty dreadnought seeks to trace

The orbit of a spindrift fleet

Lost on the deep. Whose men marooned

On racing meteorites have gazed

With fevered eyes, their thoughts attuned

To dusky phantoms on the glazed

Backdrop of suns. In dream they see

The sleeting comets crash and burn

And gaunt ribbed worlds flap hopelessly

About a gutted sun whose urn

Of ashes cold spills in the gloom.

Such drifting clouds of dust set free

May sail the dead, high seas of doom

Forever, yet may never see

Nor spume in breakers on the shore

Of worlds that spin in hyperspace:

Beyond the ken of terrene lore

Are planets out of time and space.

Beyond the islands of a sun

In Andromeda’s stellar swarms

These cosmic pioneeres have won

A beach-head. And against the storms

Of toxic gases they have wrought

Weird cities’ domes with crystal shell,

And to these alien worlds have brought

Some touch of Earth. Here they may dwell

Until once more the call of space

Has echoed in their hearts, and then

The snub-nosed mining fleets will pace

The comet trails, and treading men

Seek merchandise among the strange

Inhabitants of Narccrokelts,

With jewel dyes and sweet orange

To barter for their shaggy pelts

Symbiotic. Such men have seen

The massive glyptodons make war

On monsters trapped in the marine

Of worlds ruled by the dinosaur

Near Procyon. While from the locks

Of guardian keeps on Mercury

To where the slag of cinder rocks

Speed out beyond the star-lit sea . . . .

— Grady L. McMurtry

January 1946

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