TECHNICAL NOTE: The great majority of the links below are to
scanned antique books at the Internet Archive, most of them
anthologies. Poems frequently run for several pages; when coming
to the apparent end of a poem, turn the page to make sure!
General and Heavier Than Air ---
Lighter Than Air ---
Space Travel
---
Back to Main Subject Index
- AVIATION: Heavier Than Air
Anonymous:
A weak but ingenious young guy
"Typographically rhymed" poems like this were apparently
considered hilarious in the early 1900s, and produced en masse.
Blok, Aleksandr:
The Aviator
One of the first great poems about an air disaster, written in 1910. Translated
from the Russian by Lyudmila Purgina.
Fisher, Fred: Come, Josephine, In My Flying Machine
Extremely popular in the 1910s.
Frankau, Gilbert:
Eyes in the Air
Aerial reconnaissance in the Great War. Part of a longer war poem,
A Song of the Guns.
Frankau, Gilbert:
The Song of the Crashing Wing
Mythologises aerial warfare. Part of a longer war poem,
The Judgement of Valhalla.
Hill, Frank Ernest:
The Flyers
Aviators are god-like fellows who will liberate mankind from
the tedious constraints of Nineteenth Century life.
Hilliard, John Northern:
The Passionate Aviator Parody of Christopher Marlowe's Passionate
Shepherd.
Jones, Charles C.:
An Up-to-Date Reason Parody of the popular Victorian standard
I Cannot Sing the Old Songs. In the 1911 spoof, I cannot sing them
because I'm busy learning to fly, lest I lose my aviatrix
girl-friend.
MacKaye, Percy:
The Air Voyage Up the Hudson
Written on witnessing Wilbur Wright's flight from Governor's Island to Grant's Tomb and
back, 1909 October 4.
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Franklin Jones: Would-be (or rather, would-have-been) inventor of a flying machine.
Masters, Edgar Lee:
They'd Never Know Me Now:
A cynical take on America, included here because of
the aëroplane section in the middle.
Monroe, Harriet:
In the Air
Off on an aërial highway of the Twentieth Century!
Noyes, Alfred:
Cubism
Actually about the effect of seeing Sussex from the air.
Noyes, Alfred:
A Sky Song
Patriotic song about aerial warfare.
Phillips, Stephen:
The Aeroplane
Against not just aircraft but technology in general.
Tennyson:
Locksley Hall, 119ff
After the bombings of World War Two, people pin their hopes on technology and
the UN ... as Tennyson foretold in 1835.
Trowbridge, John Townsend:
Darius Green and His Flying Machine
Immensely popular anti-technology satire,
today remembered for the lines: 'Birds can fly // An' why can't I?'
Wynne, Annette:
The Airplane
Apparently written in some alternate Nineteenth Century
where it was not uncommon to see an airplane "spread
its wings like a butterfly"! Perhaps there is a connexion
to Wynne's poem
The Sparrow's Little Wings which contrasts birds with airplanes.
Wynne, Annette:
It Must Have Been Quite Queer
to have lived before autos, airplanes, or trollies, as did George Washington.
AVIATION: Lighter Than Air
- Anonymous:
Said the aëronaut in his balloon
- Binyon, Laurence:
The Zeppelin
- Davies, William Henry:
The Birds of Steel
Probably about zeppelins.
- Dickinson, Emily:
The Balloon
Meaning toy balloon, but better than most aëronautical poetry.
- Freneau, Philip Morin:
To Mr. Blanchard
"... the celebrated Æronaut: on his
ascent in a Balloon from the jail-yard in
Philadelphia: 1793."
- Freneau, Philip Morin:
The Progress of Balloons
Comic, but remarkably prophetic.
- Harte, Bret:
Avitor
- Lawrence, D. H.:
Zeppelin Nights
- Lear, Edward:
There was an old man of the Hague
- Riley, James Whitcomb:
From a Balloon
- Thornely, Thomas:
To Count Zeppelin
Wartime anti-German poem.
- White, Henry Kirke:
The Wonderful Juggler
About Napoleon, who has plans for submarines and war balloons.
AVIATION: Space Travel
- Anonymous:
An inventor set sail from Rangoon
- Bailey, Philip James:
A Scotchman, wheresoe'er you chance to go ... will already be there:
"And if, perchance, employed, // In prospecting a bran new asteroid, //
Ae braw Scot wad be loomin' in the void."
- Bangs, John Kendrick: The
Eagle's Song.
Don't get lost in space, Mr. U.S. Citizen,
because Uncle Sam can't rescue you there. From Emblemland,
a 1902 Alice in Wonderland imitation co-authored by
Charles Raymond Macauley (a specialist in unauthorised sequels,
especially to Sherlock Holmes, but not as highly regarded as
Bangs). It is unclear who wrote what part of Emblemland.
- Fitzpatrick, Patrick Vincent:
Gas Antiphlogistic:
From Thaumaturgus. See also the next poem, 'Del Volo'.
- Hilliard, John Northern:
The Passionate Aviator
Parody of Christopher Marlowe's Passionate
Shepherd.
- Housman, A. E.:
The Laws of God, the Laws of Man
could perhaps be evaded by
an astronaut.
- Lear, Edward:
There was an old man of the Hague
- Sandburg, Carl:
Leather Leggings
What next, now that the Earth has been explored? "Under the sea
and out to the stars we go."
- Wordsworth, William:
Prologue to Peter Bell
An imagined space-voyage.
