Anyway, since he’s raised the subject, here’s a poem on the Magi that I love. I always read it on the feast of the Epiphany, but since he’s raised the subject now, why not share it?

(The quote at the beginning is from a sermon by the Jacobean divine Lancelot Andrewes. If you ever find yourself bored stiff by the banalities of Father Kumbayah, a handy hint is to take a book of Andrewes’s sermons and read that during the homily instead. He’s possibly the clearest prose stylist in the English language. Him and Orwell and Dean Swift.)

The Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The snow was deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.” And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no information, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we lead all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I have 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.

T.S. Eliot