London, UK. This poem, The Journey of the Magi, by T. S. Eliot, is an enduring meditation on the intersection of uncertainty and resolve during a time of change. [N1]

However, it was not a smooth transition; Eliot insisted on an accounting of the facts of the world and relegation of belief to the realm of what is unknown (or unknowable). Over time, the Journey has become a source of comfort and wonder for people across many religious traditions.


The poem was first in a series that T. S. Eliot later grouped together as the Ariel Poems (1927), a cycle that emanates Eliot's spirituality and emerging religious convictions. [N2]

The Journey of the Magi begins with lines adapted and modified from a Nativity Sermon by Lancelot Andrewes in 1622, which places it at the beginning of a crucial period in literary and religious history. [N3]

However, this beginning is experiential, A cold coming we had of it, the past was hard, a word in its times that was nearly interchangeable with cold, and realistic. The poem ends with that cold and hard realism, and a glimmer of, perhaps, hope.

— ssg

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 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.

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