We are the golden men, who shall the people save

I'm getting lots of significant results from random /x/ threads these days. Yesterday, I posted "Nobody is going to die," posting this image from a random /x/ thread and focusing on the white clothing. It was the second image in the thread, timestamped Wed 05 Apr 2023 02:22:17. 

This morning, I clicked again for a random /x/ thread and got a different one -- but in this thread, too, this was the second image, timestamped Fri 14 Apr 2023 02:28:55.

Both of these were "Nobody General" threads, and both are from April 2023. (The random threads are selected from an archive going back to April 2013. The odds of getting two consecutive threads from the same month are quite low.)

Given the extreme improbability of getting two threads from the same month with the same second image, I decided to strike again while the iron was hot. The next thread I got, from April 2021, was titled "The Golden Men." This was the lead image:

And here is the text of the original post (boldface added):

WE are the golden men, who shall the people save :

For only ours are visions, perfect and divine ;

And we alone are drunken with the last best wine ;

And very Truth our souls hath flooded, wave on wave.

Come, wretched death’s inheritors, who dread the grave !

Come ! for upon our brows is set the starry sign

Of prophet, priest, and king : star of the Lion’s line !

Leave Abana, leave Pharpar, and in Jordan lave !

It thundered, and we heard : it lightened, and we saw :

Our hands have torn in twain the Tables of the Law :

Sons of the Spirit, we know nothing more of sin.

Come ! from the Tree of Eden take the mystic fruit :

Come ! pluck up God’s own knowledge by the abysmal root :

Come ! you, who would the Reign of Paradise begin.

what is this poetry means? some dude with a white robe and a gold mask made me said the first sentence in my dream.

he made me kneel and made me say "we are the golden men" and went away. i didn't know anything about the poetry before dream. i woke up and googled it with double quotes and found out.

it was almost two years ago and i still dont see a man who would the reign of paradise begin, in me.

what do you think?

It's a sonnet by Lionel Johnson, published in 1896, titled "Münster: a.d. 1534," apparently referring to the Anabaptist rebellion. The Pharazonic imagery is extremely obvious -- golden men, a flood, dreading the grave, drunknness -- and it even includes a name beginning with Phar-. The reference to "some dude with a white robe" ties back to the "Nobody is going to die" post, and of course Pharazon was motivated by a desire to overcome death.

The line "upon our brows is set the starry sign" is a link to a May 21 comment Bill left on "Rumi, Wanderjahre, Area 51, 666 phone numbers":

Tolkien wrote of . . . Earendil sailing to Valinor with a Silmaril shining on his forehead (on a large white ship shaped like a swan... you recently had imagery of someone riding a great white bird into heaven). This red car has a shining star right on his forehead. This is one artist's depiction of Earendil with the silmaril:

Although Bill uses the word forehead, Tolkien's own word for the location of Earendil's starry gem is brow, the same word used by Lionel Johnson.

In Tolkien, Earendil with his Silmaril becomes the planet Venus. The Nordic aliens encountered by Adamski, mentioned in the "Nobody is going to die" post, claimed to be from Venus.

In "Long green ships and the bad ol' debil" (May 17), I directly tied this to Earendil:

Another interpretive option is to note the similarity of Adamski's Venusians to Tolkien's Vanyar and conclude that their claim to be "from" the Star of Earendil was symbolic.

Note added: Lionel Johnson, it turns out, shares my birthday. He was born on the Ides of March 1867.