It grows on you...doesn't it?...the more you hear it...like all poetry should.

T.S Eliot has become my favourite poet after this❤️

Thank you for such a deep and great poem for X'Mas: a beautiful thought about Life itself on this ever-traveling world of ours...

A Christmas gift from the Great Poet himself!  Poetry is indeed the music of the soul. Thank you so much for sharing this gift!

One of my favourite heroes of literature and faith reads one of the most profound moments of faith and literature.

Try closing your eyes while listening to it.

I was first introduced to this poem by the Bengali tranlsation done by Rabindranath Tagore no less. The translation is as good as the original.

This is a treasure indeed.

I have never found poetry easy - lack of hearing it I think- so this was a joy to my ears. I’ve known the poem for years, but Eliot’s reading brought it alive and fresh and wonderful to listen to. Thank you

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,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

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 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 at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

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 the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

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.

I first read this poem in its Bengali translation (which is excellent by the way) by Rabindranath when I was a teenager. Since then this poem whether in English or Bengali touches a deep chord somewhere every time I read or hear it.

Simply wonderful.  Thank you for posting this.

T.S Eliot and Roger Miller! We must think alike!

Meticulously adorned with choice and perfect photos. Well done!And that reading is always so fresh. Verty clear too. Proof, if we needed it, that poets themselves are so often the best readers of their own work and often of others too boot. Thnx.

Bob, what a treasure!  Thanks for the find and the fix.

Oh, this is a wonderful editing job! I've heard this before a number of times and it's usually full of static. This is amazingly clear.  Thank you so much!

This topic is on my syllabus .
I'm a student of English Literature.😊

The Magi shall be shielded, plotters and killers will drop like flies they shall be exposed the warmongers will fail whats in the dark shall come out to the light.

the one and only....

i loved this poem back in the school days