Christ is in Our Midst!
The following poem was published in 1907 by Stefan George, an "Arch-Conservative" German poet with a nostalgia for Classical Greece and the Middle Ages. George wrote this poem out of disgust at De-Christianization and the political leaders who were taking the place of God in the hearts of their followers.
Outside Germany, Stefan George is best known as the friend and mentor of Claus Schenk von Stauffenburg, whose attempt to kill Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazis was recently depicted in the film "Valkyrie." According to historian Joachim Fest, Stauffenburg would frequently quote this poem in the lead up to the attempt on Hitler's life.
I am very fond of this poem and also believe that it has a great deal to say to Barack Obama's America as well.
The Anti-Christ
by Stefan George
“He comes from the mountain, he stands in the grove!
Our own eyes have seen it: the wine that he wove
From water, the corpses he wakens.”
O could you but hear it, at midnight my laugh:
My hour is striking; come step in my trap;
Now into my net stream the fishes.
The masses mass madder, both numbskull and sage;
They root up the arbours, they trample the grain;
Make way for the new Resurrected.
I’ll do for you everything heaven can do.
A hair-breadth is lacking – your gape too confused
To sense that your senses are stricken.
I make it all facile, the rare and the earned;
Here’s something like gold (I create it from dirt)
And something like scent, sap , and spices –
And what the great prophet himself never dared:
The art without sowing to reap out of air
The powers still lying fallow.
The Lord of the Flies is expanding his Reich;
All treasures, all blessings are swelling his might . . .
Down, down with the handful who doubt him!
Cheer louder, you dupes of the ambush of hell;
What’s left of life-essence, you squander its spells
And only on doomsday feel paupered.
You’ll hang out your tongues, but the trough has been drained;
You’ll panic like cattle whose farm is ablaze . . .
And dreadful the blast of the trumpet.
