Journey of the Magi

The story of the three wise men who traveled from the East to worship the newborn Jesus appears in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:1-12). The Magi bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Eliot is renowned for the number of literary and philosophical quotations and allusions that appear in his work. The first five lines of the poem are adapted from a sermon preached by Lancelot Andrewes, bishop of Winchester, on Christmas Day, 1622, before King James I in London: “A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, in ‘the very dead of winter’” (Andrewes, Lancelot. Christmas Day 1622.) Thus, in these opening lines the poem strikes the note that will continue almost throughout: the difficulty of the journey that the Magi undertake. The underlying theme is that spiritual rebirth, the transition from one faith to another, is not easy. It requires discipline, determination, and persistence, and maybe at some point it will be accompanied by doubt. The poem may reflect to some degree Eliot’s conversion to the Anglican faith and the personal spiritual journey he undertook.

The narrator elaborates on these difficulties in the remainder of the first stanza. At one point, the three travelers regretted leaving their “summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, / And the silken girls bringing sherbet” (Lines 9-10). (Sherbet is a cooling fruit drink.) This description shows that the Magi were of high rank in their society, accustomed to comfort and luxury, all of which they are renouncing to make this journey. Later tradition identified the three wise men as Balthazar, king of Chaldea; Gasper, an Ethiopian king of Tarshish; and Melchior, king of Nubia, which may or may not be true. The actual historical personages are not important for an understanding of Eliot’s poem.

The continual difficulties they encounter are well conveyed by the multiple repetitions of the word “and,” beginning at Line 11 with the camel men “cursing and grumbling / And running away” (Lines 11-12). “And” occurs 10 times in five lines (Lines 11-15); their troubles keep piling up and there seems to be no end to it—it is just one thing after another. It makes the Magus’s comment, “A hard time we had of it” (Line 16) sound like an understatement. Certainly, all the hardships make them doubt their mission, thinking it may be a foolish enterprise. However, the point is that they do not turn back. They persist.

Moreover, their persistence seems to bring its reward. In the second stanza, they come upon a much more pleasant, nurturing environment, a fertile valley through which a stream flows. However, the freshness of the imagery intermingles with something more disturbing. There are also “three trees on the low sky” (Line 24), which symbolize the three crosses on the hill of Calvary, on one of which—the center one—Christ was crucified. Two criminals were crucified on either side of him. The Magi are coming to honor a newborn baby, but there is also a foreshadowing of death. The reader sees this although the Magus does not. It is as if birth and death, or life and death, cannot be separated. Christ’s crucifixion is implicit in his birth. In Line 25, the “old white horse” that “galloped away in the meadow” may suggest another Biblical passage, the white horse in the book of Revelation, Chapter 6, Verse 2. The rider on that horse, according to a common interpretation, is the returning Christ, who rides as a conqueror.

Some of the images in this section, Lines 21-27 in particular, seem to have had a personal but inexplicable meaning for Eliot. Such images traditionally represent for Eliot a depth of feeling that cannot truly be articulated. Two of the images he mentions occur in “Journey of the Magi”: the “water mill” (Line 22), and the “Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver” (Line 27). The latter image alludes to the incident recorded in the gospels in which Judas, one of Christ’s disciples, betrays him to the Romans for 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 26:14-15). Also, Roman soldiers gambled for Christ’s garments at the crucifixion (Matthew 27:35).

The narrator concludes the second stanza in a matter-of-fact way. He and his companions continued their journey “And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon / Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory” (Lines 30-31). The understated tone stands in sharp contrast to the momentous nature of the event they have come to witness. It sounds like an anticlimax. The ordinary is apparently unaware of its intersection in this moment with the extraordinary, the supernatural.

In the third stanza, the old Magus reflects on the meaning of those events from so many years ago. He is speaking to someone who is writing down what he says, and he repeats himself—“but set down / This set down / This” (Lines 33-35)—either in impatience or as a habit of old age. Although he has no doubts about his experience and says he would do the whole thing again, the issues it raises have not been resolved in his mind. He and his companions witnessed and embraced a birth—“We had evidence and no doubt” (Line 37)—which was the birth of a new faith, Christianity, which in turn also produced their own spiritual rebirth. It was a necessary event, yet it did not bring them joy. Instead, it was “Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death” (Line 39), because when they returned home, they no longer fit into their old kingdoms. They were part of the new dispensation (that is, Christianity), while their people clung to the old dispensation, their traditional, pre-Christian religions.

For the three Magi, the spiritual awakening represented a permanent displacement. They were astrologers, authorities in a spiritual practice that becomes eclipsed by this new arrival. At the advent of Christianity, they find themselves alienated from their own people; the spiritual path they had voluntarily chosen did not give them an easy life. Theirs was a lonely pursuit of a new truth, which others failed to discern. For the Magi, this was a form of death, new wisdom notwithstanding. The implication is that a spiritual quest, whether in the first century of the new era or in the 20th century, or any other time or place, is likely to present a continual challenge in one form or another. The old Magus, however, still does not know if (re)birth and death are always linked in this fashion. So troubled is he by this question and so wearied by a long life that he would gladly accept his own death. It is a somber end to a poem about the advent of a religion that promises eternal salvation to all who believe and have faith in it.