With The Voices Singing In Our Ears

T.S. Eliot reads 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 ways 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 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.

--t.s. eliot
the journey of the magi