The Journey Of The Magi
By T.S. Eliot
A cold coming we had of it, Then at dawn we came down to a temperate
Just the worst time of the year valley,
For a journey, and such a long journey: Wet, below the snow line, smelling of
The ways deep and the weather sharp, vegetation;
The very dead of winter.' With a running stream and a water-mill beating
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory, the darkness,
Lying down in the melting snow. And three trees on the low sky,
There were times we regretted And an old white horse galloped away in the
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, meadow.
And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling the lintel,
and running away, and wanting their liquor and Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of
women, silver,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
shelters, But there was no information, and so we
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly continued
And the villages dirty and charging high prices: And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
A hard time we had of it. Finding the place; it was (you might say)
At the end we preferred to travel all night, satisfactory.
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying All this was a long time ago, I remember,
That this was all folly. And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth
and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth
was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our
death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old
dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
