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, and typical — misreadings: 'galling' in the sense of rubbing; 'refractory' meaning stubborn. But the original poem does not contain explanatory parentheticals. 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 the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelter, and the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly and the villages dirty and the dicey inns. At the end we came to a place where something strange was happening: in the poem, the Magus recounts seeing a white horse, an old white horse, galloping off with a riderless rider. It was a hard and bitter journey and a long time; but at the end we found a stable and a child, which was more than we expected. We had come to a place where a new order begins: "But there was a Birth". I sometimes wonder if all that was worth it. For he returns to contemplate whether the birth of this child altered anything in their lives or the world: 'We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation...' The poem ends with an ambiguous reflection on death and rebirth: 'I should be glad of another death.' The Magus implies that the old life must die for the new to be born.