A Hard Time we Had of It.

I've been reading a lot of poetry lately, and came across this about a month ago. It was just so cool that I want to share it. It being Christmas and all.

Journey of the Magi By TS Eliot

'A cold coming we had of it
just the worst time of 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 sherbt.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women
And 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 for 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 gallopped 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, so we cotinued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place, it was (young men 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.