“A cold coming we had of it,
\nJust the worst time of the year
\nFor a journey, and such a long journey:
\nThe ways deep and the weather sharp,
\nThe very dead of winter.”
\nAnd the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
\nLying down in the melting snow.<\/p>\n
There were times we regretted
\nThe summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
\nAnd the silken girls bringing sherbet.
\nThen the camel\u00a0men cursing and grumbling
\nAnd running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
\nAnd the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
\nAnd the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
\nAnd the villages dirty, and charging high prices:
\nA hard time we had of it.
\nAt the end we preferred to travel all night,
\nSleeping in snatches,
\nWith the voices singing in our ears, saying
\nThat this was all folly.
\nThen at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
\nWet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
\nWith a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
\nAnd three trees on the low sky,
\nAnd an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
\nThen we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
\nSix hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
\nAnd feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
\nBut there was no information, and so we continued
\nAnd arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
\nFinding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.<\/p>\n
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
\nAnd I would do it again, but set down
\nThis set down
\nThis: were we led all that way for
\nBirth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
\nWe had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
\nBut had thought they were different; this Birth was
\nHard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
\nWe returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
\nBut no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
\nWith an alien\u00a0people clutching their gods.
\nI should be glad of another death.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0Eliot describes his\u00a0 life\u2019s painful journey from the death of his agnosticism to the birth occurring with his\u00a0 conversion to Christianity in 1927.\u00a0 The first five lines were lifted from Lancelot Andrewes’s Nativity Sermon of 1622.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Hear Eliot read his poem:<\/p>\n