I love poetry by William Butler Yeats. His poem, "The Second Coming" really spoke to me about a sort of fear of the future. The religious symbolism in the poem is woven together with historical events (WWI just ended). My favorite few lines are:
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?