Three Magi a-journeying!

One of the pieces of music I'm practising furiously at the moment is Benjamin Britten's Journey of the Magi, a weird and wonderful setting of the famous poem by T S Eliot. It's a mesmerising piece of work, imagining what might have gone through the minds of the wise men as they journeyed to Bethlehem. A hard time we had of it is the verdict, as they describe the obstacles they faced, and the doubt in their minds: the voices singing in our ears, saying that this was all folly.

The final stanza intrigues me the most, in which the Magi look back at the end of their quest; Eliot, himself undergoing something of a religious awakening at this point in his life, has the men commenting on the strange shadows of Death that seemed to linger around the Christ-child's birth, and their realisation that their world would forever be different.

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.