The Doomscroll
All the bad news · newest first · nothing since 1920
A feed of doom, ordered the way a feed is ordered: newest at the top, by the date each item was first published. It is also, as promised, a scroll.
The joke is that this is exactly what the other kind of doomscrolling gives you — an endless column of the worst thing anybody could think of, arriving in reverse chronological order — except that all of this is four hundred years old, none of it is trying to sell you anything, and every single item is a person who sat down and made the dread into something with a shape.
The date is when it went public, not when it was written, and for a third of this scroll the two are decades apart. Hopkins sat in a friend’s desk for twenty-nine years. Hardy’s sat in a drawer for thirty-one. Dickinson’s was not printed until four years after she died, retitled, tidied and a stanza short. A feed records when the news broke, so that is what this is ordered on, and each item says the other date where it is known.
Every poem here is out of copyright everywhere — not just in the United States — which means every one of these writers has been dead more than seventy years. That rule cost this scroll its best opening item: T. S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men would have sat at the top, and it is public domain in America and will not be in much of Europe until the 2030s. A site that serves everybody cannot publish somebody’s whole poem on a technicality that only holds in one country.
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1920 · first published in Poems (1920), edited by Siegfried Sassoon and Edith Sitwell
OFFICIAL LINE ON GLORY CONTRADICTED BY EVERYONE WHO WAS THERE
Filed from the front by a man who did not come home. Printed two years after he was killed, a week before the armistice.
Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen, who died in 1918 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
Dulce et Decorum est
Wilfred Owen · 1920
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.First published in Poems (1920), edited by Siegfried Sassoon and Edith Sitwell. This text is from the first published edition, transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text — see it there. Wilfred Owen died in 1918, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1920 · first published in The Dial, November 1920
CENTRE CONFIRMED NOT HOLDING; FALCON UNREACHABLE
Twenty centuries of stony sleep end early. Authorities decline to say what is on its way to Bethlehem.
The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats, who died in 1939 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
The Second Coming
W. B. Yeats · 1920
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?First published in The Dial, November 1920. This text is from Michael Robartes and the Dancer (Cuala Press), transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text — see it there. W. B. Yeats died in 1939, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1918 · first published in Poems (1918), edited by Robert Bridges
MIND FOUND TO CONTAIN CLIFFS; NO RAILING FITTED
The most exact description of despair anybody has managed, sat in a friend's desk for twenty-nine years before it was printed.
No worst, there is none by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who died in 1889 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
No worst, there is none
Gerard Manley Hopkins · 1918
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.First published in Poems (1918), edited by Robert Bridges. This text is from Bridges' first edition, transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text — see it there. Gerard Manley Hopkins died in 1889, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1898 · first published in Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898)
SUN GOES WHITE OVER POND; NOTHING SALVAGEABLE
Dated 1867 under its own last line and left in a drawer for thirty-one years, which is its own kind of news.
Neutral Tones by Thomas Hardy, who died in 1928 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
Neutral Tones
Thomas Hardy · 1898
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
—They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago:
And some words played between us to and fro—
On which lost the more by our love.The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing. . . .Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.First published in Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898). This text is from the 1898 first collection, transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text — see it there. Thomas Hardy died in 1928, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1890 · first published in Poems (1890), edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, printed there as “The Chariot”
LOCAL WOMAN ACCEPTS LIFT FROM STRANGER, ARRIVES CENTURIES LATE
Published four years after she died by editors who retitled it, tidied her punctuation and left a stanza out. This is their version; the missing stanza is the one with the gossamer gown.
Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson, who died in 1886 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
Because I could not stop for Death
Emily Dickinson · 1890
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.Since then 't is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.First published in Poems (1890), edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, printed there as “The Chariot”. This text is from the 1890 first printing, transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text — see it there. Emily Dickinson died in 1886, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1867 · first published in New Poems (1867)
TIDE OF FAITH REPORTED GOING OUT; NO REPLACEMENT SCHEDULED
Filed from a hotel window on the Kent coast. Begins calm and ends on a beach with armies on it.
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, who died in 1888 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold · 1867
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery: we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.First published in New Poems (1867). This text is from The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold, transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text — see it there. Matthew Arnold died in 1888, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1849 · first published in the New-York Daily Tribune, 9 October 1849
WIND OUT OF A CLOUD BLAMED; WIDOWER STILL SLEEPING IN THE TOMB
Printed two days after the poet's own death, in the same paper that ran his obituary. No editor could have arranged that.
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe, who died in 1849 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe · 1849
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.First published in the New-York Daily Tribune, 9 October 1849. This text is from The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2 (1859), transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text — see it there. Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1818 · first published in The Examiner, 11 January 1818, signed “Glirastes”
KING OF KINGS' WORKS REVIEWED; NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS
Filed to a weekly paper under a pen name. The pen name is forgotten and the pedestal is not.
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who died in 1822 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1818
I met a Traveller from an antique land,
Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.”
Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.First published in The Examiner, 11 January 1818, signed “Glirastes”. This text is from The Examiner's own printing, transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text — see it there. Percy Bysshe Shelley died in 1822, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1816 · first published in The Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems (1816)
SUN EXTINGUISHED; SURVIVORS BURN THE FURNITURE, THEN EACH OTHER
Written in the year without a summer, when a volcano on the other side of the world took the weather away and nobody yet knew why.
Darkness by George Gordon, Lord Byron, who died in 1824 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
Darkness
George Gordon, Lord Byron · 1816
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crownéd kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the World contained;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenchéd hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past World; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled: the wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again:—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no Love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was Death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shrieked, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The World was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.First published in The Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems (1816). This text is from The Works of Lord Byron (1901), edited by E. H. Coleridge, transcribed from Wikisource — see it there. George Gordon, Lord Byron died in 1824, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1794 · first published in Songs of Experience (1794)
EVERY FACE IN THE CITY FOUND TO CARRY THE SAME MARK
Chartered street, chartered river. The word turns up twice and means the opposite of free both times.
London by William Blake, who died in 1827 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
London
William Blake · 1794
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.But most, thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.First published in Songs of Experience (1794). This text is from the 1826 copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text — see it there. William Blake died in 1827, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1794 · first published in Songs of Experience (1794)
INVISIBLE WORM LOCATED IN BED OF CRIMSON JOY
Eight lines. Nobody has ever agreed what it is about and everybody agrees that it is about that.
The Sick Rose by William Blake, who died in 1827 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
The Sick Rose
William Blake · 1794
O rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.First published in Songs of Experience (1794). This text is from the 1826 copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text — see it there. William Blake died in 1827, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1633 · first published in Poems (1633)
DEATH DEMOTED TO SLAVE OF FATE, CHANCE, KINGS AND DESPERATE MEN
Printed two years after the poet died, which he would have enjoyed. Ends by telling death that death is the one who dies.
Death be not proud by John Donne, who died in 1631 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
Death be not proud
John Donne · 1633
Death be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better than thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.First published in Poems (1633). This text is from the Holy Sonnets, transcribed from Wikisource — see it there. John Donne died in 1631, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
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1609 · first published in Shake-speares Sonnets (1609)
AUTUMN, TWILIGHT AND A FIRE GOING OUT, ALL IN ONE MAN
The oldest thing on this scroll and the only one still in its own spelling — including the quarto's famous slip, “Bare rn'wd quiers”, which editors since have read as bare ruin'd choirs.
Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare, who died in 1616 — which is why the whole of it can be printed here
Sonnet 73
William Shakespeare · 1609
That time of yeeare thou maist in me behold,
When yellow leaues, or none, or few doe hange
Vpon those boughes which shake against the could,
Bare rn'wd quiers, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twi-light of such day,
As after Sun-set fadeth in the West,
Which by and by blacke night doth take away,
Deaths second selfe that seals vp all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lye,
As the death bed, whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nurrisht by.
This thou perceu'st, which makes thy loue more strong,
To loue that well, which thou must leaue ere long.First published in Shake-speares Sonnets (1609). This text is from the 1609 quarto, transcribed from Wikisource's scan-backed text, spelling unmodernised — see it there. William Shakespeare died in 1616, so the poem is out of copyright everywhere.
That is the bottom of the scroll. Three hundred and eleven years of it, and thirteen items. Not one of them was a notification. Every text was transcribed from Wikisource and every item names the printing it came from, because these poems exist in several and they differ — which is why The Darkling Thrush is not on here at all. Wikisource’s page for it names no printing and says so itself, and a text nobody can trace is the one thing a scroll built out of dates cannot carry. The headlines and the lines under them are ours and are meant to be funny; the poems are not ours and are not.
The Mopery is back up the stairs, and the street is past that. It is very loud out there.
HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?
Starts wherever your device says. There is no ambient layer on this scroll at any setting. Paper does not move, and a feed that moved by itself is the thing this room is a joke about.
Liner notes · Changelog · a Stimpunks Foundation street.