Just the worst time of year,
For a journey, and such a long journey,
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
Eliot sets the scene in his memory in both the above lines and in the next two lines:
“And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.”
That scene describes a very cold winter and three important people are going on a long journey. The camels have sores where the baggage straps have rubbed against their skin. They are being stubborn and won’t get up.
At this point the magi’s attendants are becoming unruly and want to turn back. Also the Magus, who is telling the story, feels himself the temptation to go back but kept on going anyway as shown in this passage:
“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 this point we see some repetition of the words “we had of it” from the first line. Also, Eliot, at this point, starts off a list with a lot of “ands” meaning that the Magus did not want such inconveniences.
More setbacks are seen at this point in the poem with the Magi resorting to sleeping very little and travelling dangerously at night, with all the people that they meet saying that it was the wrong thing to do:
“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.”
Also, the “voices” could be seen as the people back in their home telling them that it was a stupid idea to go in the first place.
The start of the second stanza sees the travellers coming down into a warmer environment:
“Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation,”
The line structure also reflects this happening because the lines are written in chronological order when the Magi came down the slope; the temperature rose, the snow turned more into slush the further down they got. Also, the lines got longer, to signify the hill. They got to the point where the snow ceased to exist and they could smell the plants in the valley.
Now we see the signs of what will happen to this baby they are going to see.
“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 at empty wine-skins.”
All of the information above has something to do with the last days of Christ. The “three trees” represent the three crosses on Calvary, where Jesus and two thieves were crucified. The “old white horse” symbolizes Christ when he was resurrected. The “Tavern” represents the vinegar wine that was offered to Christ while on the cross by Roman guards. The “vine leaves over the lintel” represents the crown of thorns placed on Christ’s head by the Romans soldiers that mocked him. The “six hands…dicing” represent the Romans gambling over Christ’s clothes, while he was still alive on the cross and the “pieces of silver” are the thirty silver coins Judas received for betraying Christ. Lastly, the “empty wine skins” represent the Last Supper of Christ and the Apostles.
The arrival of the Magi at the stable seems to only be “satisfactory” experience for the poet, as it seems that he disapproves of the Messiah being born in a stable.
In the third and final stanza, the Magus looks back at his journey and thinks about Births and Deaths. The Magus talks about the birth of a baby, Christ, and at His death, the birth of a religion, Christianity, and, at the same time, the death of the old ways and the old religion:
“This: were we led all this way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death”
The “Hard and bitter agony… like Death” is an example of a simile that means that the journey for the Magus was like dying to him, because he had gone from the comfort from his home, travelled a great distance and suffered hardships that he had probably never had to endure through before, all to see a baby being born in a stable whilst at the same time, sees the baby’s death on the journey.
At the end of the stanza, and the end of the poem, the Magus finishes with thoughts of his own “subjects” still believing in an old religion and he looks forward to his own death
“With an alien people clutching their god.
I should be glad of another death”
The poem “The Journey of the Magi” is T. S. Eliot recalling the journey of the three Wise Men to witness the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem. In this Critical Evaluation, I examined the poem, in depth, and tried to show how the poet captured the emotion of the Magus.
