Sunday Meditation: Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord.  I’ve had a number of posts on this feast and the subject of the Magi.  You can access past posts on these subjects here.    There are posts on the significance of the Epiphany as well as to its details.  There are posts on Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s wonderful book unlocking the mystery of these wise men, The Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men.   And there are analysis of poems by G.K. Chesterton and T.S. Eliot on the subject of the Magi.  All well worth exploring.

Today I would like to emphasize the gifts the Magi present infant Jesus.  It is commonly understood that the gift of gold represents Jesus’ royalty, frankincense represents his priestly office, and myrrh His sacrificial death.  Pierre-Marie Dumont in this month’s Magnificat magazine (Jan 2026, Vol. 21, No. 11, pp 6-7) proposes we offer these gifts to Jesus today in the form of spiritual gifts.  The gold we give is our love, “gold refined by the fire mentioned in the Book of Revelation (3:18).”  The frankincense we offer are our prayers “that ascend to God as a sweet-smelling offering.”  The myrrh we offer is “our communion in the Passion and death of Jesus,” consisting of our sacrifices and offerings to the Lord.  I found that beautiful.

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.”

When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people,

He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet:

And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance.

He sent them to Bethlehem and said,

“Go and search diligently for the child.

When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.”

After their audience with the king they set out.

And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.

They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother.

They prostrated themselves and did him homage.

Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way..

~Mt 2:1-12

 

Bishop Barron explains the traditional understanding of the three gifts, but he also connects the expedition of the Magi with a search for the ultimate fulfillment which is the quest to discover God. 

What is admirable in the Magi is that they follow the sign so that the longing will be fulfilled if we move in this direction.  “We’re the three kings longing for Christ.”  That is beautiful. 

I have presented pastoral homilies by different members of the Capuchin Franciscan Friars before in their YouTube channel, “A Simple Word.”  I have never presented Fr. Christopher Gama before, and here he provides an insightful homily.

We can only find God through the virtue of humility.  “Creation points out the way, and God finishes the path.  Grace builds on nature!”  It changes us and sends us home in another way.

 

Sunday Meditation: “They opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

Let’s end with this lovely Christmas carol perfect for the epiphany, performed by North Valley Chamber Chorale:

I love this version. 

Solemnity Meditation: The Magi

On this second Sunday of Christmas, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord.  Who were these strange men—the Gospel does not say they were kings—who followed a star to baby Jesus?  Well I had four blog posts on the reading of Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s book, The Mystery of the Magi.  If you really want to know who these mysterious men were—not the fable of Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior—but the real history, read my posts.  Here is blog post #4 on Fr. Longenecker’s book, and from there are links to Posts one, two, and three.  The real history is more astonishing than the legend. 

However, Matthew’s spiritual significance is just what epiphany means.   Epiphany is a revelation of God, a theophany, and here the Magi reveal to the world that baby Jesus is the Christ, King of the Jews.

 

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,

in the days of King Herod,

behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,

“Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star at its rising

and have come to do him homage.”

When King Herod heard this,

he was greatly troubled,

and all Jerusalem with him.

Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people,

he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea,

for thus it has been written through the prophet:

And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

since from you shall come a ruler,

who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Then Herod called the magi secretly

and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance.

He sent them to Bethlehem and said,

“Go and search diligently for the child.

When you have found him, bring me word,

that I too may go and do him homage.”

After their audience with the king they set out.

And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them,

until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.

They were overjoyed at seeing the star,

and on entering the house

they saw the child with Mary his mother.

They prostrated themselves and did him homage.

Then they opened their treasures

and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,

they departed for their country by another way.

~Mt 2:1-12

 

Fr. Geoffrey Plant as usual does a thorough of explaining the historical and biblical significance of the Epiphany.

 

Fr. Geoffrey gives a handful of theories of where the Magi came from but none of them agree with Fr. Longenecker’s research.  I would go with Fr. Longenecker. 

Now for a sermon on the spiritual significance of the epiphany, let’s turn to Jeff Cavins.

 

It occurs to me that the light given off by Christ shines through the Magi.  Let the light of Christ shine through you.  Let your person be a manifestation of Christ, an epiphany to the world.

We don’t see much of how the Magi are transformed by their visit, but the poet T.S. Eliot speculates on how one particular Magus (singular for Magi) is transformed in his great poem “The Journey of the Magi.”  I provided a detailedanalysis of the poem here if you wish to read and understand this great work of poetry.    

 

Solemnity Meditation: “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?  We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.”

 

Instead of a hymn this week, I am going to provide a reading by someone named Arthur L. Wood of T.S. Eliot’s he Journey of the Magi.” 

 

I selected this clip since it provided the words, but that is also an excellent reading.

Poetry Analysis: The Wise Men by G.K. Chesterton

In addition to Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi,” which I posted here, we also read and discussed G.K. Chesterton’s poem, “The Wise Men” as part of our discussion of Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s book, The Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men.  You can read the four part blog posts on Longenecker’s book: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.   

 

The Wise Men

By G.K. Chesterton (1913)

 

Step softly, under snow or rain,

   To find the place where men can pray;

The way is all so very plain

   That we may lose the way.

 

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore,

   On tortured puzzles from our youth,

We know all labyrinthine lore,

We are the three Wise Men of yore,

   And we know all things but the truth.

 

We have gone round and round the hill,

   And lost the wood among the trees,

And learnt long names for every ill,

And served the made gods, naming still

   The Furies the Eumenides.

 

The gods of violence took the veil

   Of vision and philosophy,

The Serpent that brought all men bale,

He bites his own accursed tail,

   And calls himself Eternity.

 

Go humbly . . . it has hailed and snowed . . .

   With voices low and lanterns lit;

So very simple is the road,

   That we may stray from it.

 

The world grows terrible and white,

   And blinding white the breaking day;

We walk bewildered in the light,

For something is too large for sight,

   And something much too plain to say.

 

The Child that was ere worlds begun ─

(. . . We need but walk a little way . . .

We need but see a latch undone . . .)

The Child that played with moon and sun

   Is playing with a little hay.

 

The house from which the heavens are fed,

   The old strange house that is our own,

Where tricks of words are never said,

And Mercy is as plain as bread,

   And Honour is as hard as stone.

 

Go humbly; humble are the skies,

   And low and large and fierce the Star,

So very near the Manger lies

That we may travel far.

 

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes

   To roar to the resounding plain,

And the whole heaven shouts and shakes

   For God Himself is born again

And we are little children walking

   Through the snow and rain.

 

You can hear “The Wise Men” read on YouTube, here:

 

 I can’t say I understand every line, but I think I got the gist, though it took quite a few readings and listening’s.  This is a poem you have to hear.

So I have to say I was a little confused by the different forms of the stanzas.  There are three forms, a quatrain (four lines), a cinquain (five lines), and a sestet (six lines).  The stanzas are all in iambic meter (unstressed/stressed syllable pattern) and are of eight syllables (referred to as four feet) long.  The quatrains and the sestet end with a shortened line of six syllables.  I should also mention that the quatrain and the sestet also have an alternating ABAB (and a concluding AB for the sestet) rhyme scheme while the cinquain has an ABAAB rhyme scheme.

So the eight syllabic line quatrain, including the shortened fourth line, is a classic ballad form.  There are variations on this, but what Chesterton chose might be most common.  They are typically narrative and the form harkens back to the Middle Ages, though they returned to popularity in the 19^th century. 

The cinquain was not as typical but also made a comeback in the 19^th century.  The 19^th century poets strove for musicality, and Chesterton really comes from that tradition.  The great heyday of the cinquain I would say was in the 17^th century.  “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness” by John Donne is a really fine example.  That fifth line gives a cinquain more of a contemplative feel. 

Finally a sestet echoes the last six lines of an Italian sonnet, which among other things gives a closure to a thought. 

In all there are ten stanzas, arranged in what I would consider a pattern: 4-5-5-5-4-5-5-5-4-6, where four stands for a quatrain, five for a cinquain, and six for the sestet.   There’s no such established form that I could find, so I would say it’s Chesterton’s creation.  And like the Victorian poets whose lineage he comes from (think Tennyson, Poe, Rossetti, even Yeats and others) the musical/sound experience is paramount to his construction.  And as I look at each of the stanzas, I would say they function in their classical sense.  Though not perfectly, the quatrains are narrative, the cinquains are contemplative, and the sestet brings it to a conclusion.  That’s pretty innovative and yet traditional at the same time!

Now what’s the narrative about?  Yes, the Magi traveling to Jesus, but what I can’t distinguish is whether it’s an actual Magi speaking or someone in Chesterton’s present time (the narrator?) taking on the persona of a Magi.  It seems to blur.  What do people think on that?  Is it one or the other or both?  I just can’t make up my mind. 

Now what I would do at this point is identify the central idea of each stanza.  Here’s my best guess.

Stanza 1: Journey to a place to pray, which I take is the Magi kneeling before the manger as in a crèche scene.  I’m also struck by the paradox that way is plain but easy to lose one’s way.

Stanza 2: Describes the studious nature of the Magi with another paradox that despite their learning they don’t know the truth.

Stanza 3: Further describes the Magi learning, but this time characterized as caught in a circular trap serving merciless pagan gods.

Stanza 4: He describes these gods as hiding the truth, bringing evil by linking them to the serpent.  What’s fascinating here is he has another reference to circular, the serpent biting his tail is a circle, and he identifies it as a false eternity.

Now take a break here.  I would say that stanzas one through four are the first chunk of thought.  Let’s call this Part 1.  It concerns the Magi’s fruitless existence prior to encountering Christ.

Stanza 5: The journey continues.  Again Chesterton brings up the paradox about getting lost on a simple road.

Stanza 6: A description of the whirlwind of snow about them, being blinded by a light, and paradoxically (again!) not being able to see something that is “too large for sight.”

Stanza 7: A walking into the stable to find the Christ child.  Best lines in the poem: “The Child that played with moon and sun/Is playing with a little hay.”

Stanza 8: I have to admit, I am baffled by this stanza.  Which house?  The Magi’s home?  The stable?  The house of the narrator?  This feels like the philosophic center of the poem but I can’t get it. 

OK, those last four stanzas can be called Part 2.  The reach the Christ child and are overwhelmed.

Stanza 9: I think they walk up to the manger here, and again another paradox: they are near but yet so far still to go.  I take that as they still have a journey to comprehend the significance. 

Stanza 10: So this concludes with a roaring laughter.  Why?  And another paradox, “God Himself is born again.”  “Again”?  When was He born the first time?  But the concluding couplet is very striking: they have suddenly, I assume metaphorically, become children “walking through snow and rain.”

So what I take from that last stanza is that the joy of meeting the Christ child transforms the narrators (he refers to a “we”) into children playing in snow.  The once drudgery of the journey is a sort of child’s play now.  This, and the plain too that the lion roars on, brings the poem back to the first stanza of snow and rain.  It gives the poem a circular feel. 

This leaves me with some unanswered questions.  So why the circular form and how does that relate to the serpent’s evil circular image in Part 1?  What is stanza 8 all about?  Why the laughter as a concluding image—it seems to come from nowhere?  And what about the narrator?  Is it the wise men of yore or present day speaker? 

Still I became very fond of the poem as I understood it!  That was enjoyable.

 

Poetry Analysis: The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot

Given the similarity in themes, this poem, “The Journey of the Magi” by T.S. Eliot and G.K. Chesterton’s poem “The Wise Men” were part of the discussion at the end of Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s book, The Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men.  So this and a coming post on Chesterton’s poem are associated as Magi posts.  You can read the four part blog posts on Longenecker’s book: Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.  

 

Here is Eliot’s poem.

 

The Journey of the Magi

By T.S. Eliot

 

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, sorefooted, 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 arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might 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.

  

You can listen to T.S. Eliot reading his own poem here:

 

First we should note the form of the poem.  We have three uneven stanzas, the first of twenty lines, the second of eleven lines, and the third of twelve lines.  It is in free verse of uneven line length with no rhyme scheme.  It’s pretty close to natural speech.  If you could summarize the theme of each stanza, one could say the first is the journey, the second is the arrival, and the third is trying to comprehend the experience.  We see that the first two stanzas, the narrator speaks in the inclusive “we” while in the third he shifts to the personal “I.” 

We see that in the first stanza the journey was difficult: cold, long, dirty, expensive, sleepless, having to sustain uncouth and repulsive workers and hostile cities, all the while dreaming of the “silken girls” of summer back home and hearing the voices in his head saying it was “folly.”  The details are of bodily lusts, and of other sinful and unkind acts, and the scenery of a waste land of winter, dead snow, nothing growing.  The central animal imagery is of camels who are “galled,” that is to say chafed, irate, who are “sorefooted,” that is struggling, and “refractory,” that is to say resistant, stubborn.  In fact, the word “refractory,” an odd word to use in a poem, characterizes the whole first stanza: resistance.

In the second stanza, the narrator comes to a “temperate valley,” echoing perhaps the land of milk and honey.  We have “vegetation,” so we have life.  We have running water and civilization with the wind-mill, and a horse, this stanza’s central animal image, in the meadow.  We have allusions to the sacraments, a running stream for baptism, vegetation with a wind mill suggesting grain milled into flour for bread, and a tavern with vine leaves suggesting wine.  But we have not come to Eden.  Interwoven we have images of the crucifixion: the three trees and hands dicing for silver, and feet kicking “empty wine-skins.”  But the narrator concludes with the word “satisfactory,” the word that I think characterizes this stanza and which by the way rhymes with the word “refractory” from the previous.  On first blush, “satisfactory” sounds anticlimactic until you look at its Latin root of satis, meaning enough, sufficient.  Yes what they found was anticlimactic, after all it was only a baby they found, but the baby was “enough,” “sufficient,” “fulfilling.” 

In the final stanza what is at first striking is the absolute lack of imagery.  There is none.  Everything is an abstraction.  Birth is a summary descriptive; it lacks any specificity.  The same thing with death.  There are no images of birth and death given.  “Kingdoms,” “evidence,” “remember,” “agony,” and “dispensation” are more abstractions.  The closest he comes to an image is with “alien people clutching their gods.”  While the clutching of gods is still an abstraction, it does approximate an image, and what a strange way to end a Christian poem with an image of people holding on to their pagan gods.  “Dispensation” is I think the word that characterizes this stanza, and I think defines the entire poem.  I’ll get to that shortly.

So what are we to make of the entire poem?  Yes, it’s the first person account from one of the Magi, but this poem came shortly after Eliot’s profound religious conversion.  In a sense perhaps this poem is taking us through his biographical journey.  What do we make of the three stanza division?  When you see three you kind of think of the Trinity, but unfortunately there is no way to link any of the Persons of the Trinity to the first and second stanza.  No that doesn’t fit, but perhaps you can think of this as Dante’s journey through the Divine Comedy, with the first stanza being hell, the second being purgatory, and the third being heaven.  That fits rather nicely when you know that Eliot loved Dante. 

Perhaps an even better organizing principle is St. Augustine’s City of God.  There Augustine constructs the polar opposites of the City of Man versus the City of God, but more importantly he divides the City of Man into two parts, the pagan world and the world of Judaism, that is, of the Old Testament.  Could we see the first stanza as sitting in for the pagan world, the second stanza for the world of the Old Testament, and the third stanza for the sublime New Testament’s City of God?  I certainly think so.  The first stanza is filled with pagan idolatry of wine (liquor), women, and song (voices singing in our ears)!  The people around him are completely undisciplined, seeking only satisfying bodily passions.  Even the Magi dreams of girls and sherbet.  There is no self-sacrifice.  Only grumbling of discomforts, hostility, and no turning the other cheek.  Even the “folly” of the voices seems to echo St. Paul’s “Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles’ (1 Cor 23).  The ‘folly” comes from the perception of gentiles.

In the second stanza I mentioned how we have the rudiments of the sacraments, but unfulfilled, and we even have the lintel of the Passover.  We also have the allusions to the crucifixion, and we have the white horse, which I think is a symbol of earthly power, which becomes harnessed in heaven (there are several white horses in the Book of Revelation) but here runs away.  The most intriguing image is that of the empty wine-skins.  This alludes to Jesus’ parable of the wineskins: “no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined.  Rather, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins” (Lk 5:37-8).  In Jesus’ parable, the old wineskin is Israel of the Old Testament.  It cannot hold the new wine that is Jesus or the new covenant. 

In the final stanza we are met with “Birth” and “Death,” both strikingly capitalized.  What Eliot has done here is merged the two.  Birth and death are one which is merged in the person of Jesus Christ.  Indeed, how many births and deaths can we draw up here?  There is Christ of course.  There is the Magus narrator who is now born to a new life and realizes that this birth is a mortification—a death to the body.  There is the same for the poet Eliot in his personal experience, a new devout Eliot and the old pagan Eliot dead.  But there is the death that Christ’s birth conquered through His resurrection, so that with heaven open we all can be born to eternal life.  His birth ends death through a new birth.  Finally it is no accident I think that the last stanza has twelve lines.  The Feast of the Magi is celebrated on the twelfth day of Christmas, but more importantly the number twelve symbolizes completeness in Biblical numerology, not just completeness but fulfillment.  The Old Testament is fulfilled in the New.  Indeed then one can look back at the other stanzas and link the twenty lines of the first stanza to the undisciplined indulgence of the pagan world, and the eleven lines of the second stanza to the coming short and unfulfilled of the Old Testament world.  I don’t know if Eliot had Augustine’s City of God in mind but the construction and details work very well.

Finally I must mention what I think is the greatest poetic flare of the entire poem.  I’ve read this poem for decades and never saw this, and it has elevated this poem from a good to a great poem for me.  It’s these lines that are so easy to overlook and probably aren’t even comprehensible.  They weren’t for me all these years, and for some reason I never stopped to draw their significance.  But then I never stopped to break the poem down like this.  You miss so much if you don’t analyze a poem in a formal, disciplined way.  These lines: “And I would do it again, but set down/This set down/This: were we led all that way for…”  It actually sounds discombobulated: “but set down/This set down/This.”  Eliot never describes the manger scene, the Christ child, and the holy parents.  He can’t.  You can’t describe the mystery of the incarnation.  It’s beyond words.  The experience has overwhelmed him.  It is a conversion experience.  It is indescribable.  It’s the same with my personal religious experience.  I was essentially a pagan.  I was moved beyond comprehension, and I can’t for the life of me describe it.  Words just fail.  I assume the same thing happened to Eliot on his conversion.  Despite Eliot being the greatest poet in English of the 20^th century he can’t describe it.  It comes down to a babbling incomprehension.  It comes down to “this,” just “this.”  Nothing more. 

And so when the magus returns to his country, to those “alien people,” he is the one alienated.  He has to live in the “old dispensation,” which means in the old order of things.  Look up the definition of “dispensation.”  (1) A general order or arrangement of things.  (2) An exemption from the law or vow or some rule.  (3) An act of dispensing, distributing.  So he is alienated in the world of the old arrangement; but now exempt from the old law of the Old Testament, and has received the dispensed free grace of God to those of faith.  He has been profoundly changed.  He has gone through a birth, which is the death of his old self. And awaits the death of his bodily self into a new birth. 

You may not like this poem, but it is a rich, rich poem by one of the greatest poets to ever have lived.  In just a mere 43 lines, he has taken the reader through a powerful experience.

Also the shift to the personal "I" in the last stanza makes the experience singular. We ultimately go before the Lord as individuals. It is our individual hearts that are changed.

Casey Commented:

Thank you, Manny. This was an excellent articulation of the poem and it does help a great deal.

 

I disagree a bit that one gains most in analyzing a poem formally. A poem ought to convey that which cannot be conveyed ordinarily. That is, a poem, as unit, conveys something complete. I feel this poem fails in that regard.

 

However, after reading that articulation, I wonder if it fails for me because I have not had the kind of conversion experience you describe. Perhaps the unit of meaning is something that I cannot grasp having not experienced it. As one might never grasp the experience of eating persimmon who has never eaten one.

My reply to Casey:

Perhaps a little bit. But I think the poem grew on me as I uncovered more and more of its muted poetic elements, even beside that inarticulate moment in the poem. Poems such as this are not as obvious as poems that have established form such as meter and rhyme. Both types of poems have organizing principles, and while the organizing principle is given in say the Chesterton poem, here you have to deduce it. It so happened that I was reading Augustine's City of God the other day and was fresh on my mind. If it's the musicality of poetry that is pleasing to you, then I can understand why this one doesn't suit your taste. But for me it was the connections and the word play (refractory/satisfactory/vegetation/dispensation), the supporting imagery, all culminating in a life changing experience that made me realize it was a great poem. Was it you that used the word "encoded" to see how the Old Testament is found in the New? Someone used that word recently in that context. Eliot does similar. He "encodes" meaning through words and images and progression to pack what could easily be a novel length story into just 43 lines. The beauty of this poem is to see all that.

Kerstin Commented:

Manny, I get the feeling you like the puzzling out of wordplays, the detective work of looking what is deeper in these types of poems by picking the language apart. To me this looks like a lot of work. I like it a little easier presented, give me the imagery in ready to comprehend pieces. But I think this has to do with what sorts of things we enjoy and where our aptitudes lay. I can spend countless hours learning about traditional/ancestral preserving and cooking methods, trying to perfect making country paté, mayonnaise, or sourdough bread. The hours can fly by and I don't even notice. I can imagine you can spend this kind of time delighting in what you can uncover in a poem.

My Reply to Kerstin:

LOL, well yes. But the puzzling out is not the objective. The objective is to understand the artistry. It's not just poems or novels but paintings and symphonies and such. For some people understanding the artistry takes the wonder out of the work. For others understanding the artistry gives the work its full wonder. I'm in the latter category.

My Comment:

Oh I'm sorry you guys don't like this. It's really a great poem.

 

If you didn't like Eliot reading it himself, you should listen to this great read by Sir john Gielgood:

 

 

Or this reading by this young man, Tim Martin.  I have no idea who he is, but this might be the very best reading:

 

I have to admit, I love T.S. Eliot's poetry.  The name of this blog is taken from Eliot's Four Quartets.