The subject matter of the poem is not familiar to me so I had to do some research to find out who the magi were and why they were making this journey. In the New Testament of the Bible, the birth of Jesus Christ was attended by a new star. Some magi (who were Zoroastrian astrologer-priests from ancient Persia) followed the star, which they saw as indicating a new king in the astrological house of the Jews, and came to pay tribute. These men are assumed to be three in number, because they brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
             The poem is an account of the journey from the point of view of one of the magi told as a memoir. It maintains Eliot's consistent theme of alienation and a feeling of helplessness in a world that has changed. Instead of a remembrance of the phenomenon of the journey, this poem is essentially a complaint about a trip that was painful, and wearying to the magi. The speaker says that a voice was always whispering in their ears as they went that "this was all folly". The magus, in my opinion, does not seem too impressed by the infant, and yet he realizes that the birth of Jesus Christ has changed everything. At the end of the poem, the magus asks, "were we led all that way for Birth or Death?" I believe this to mean that the birth of Christ was the death of his world of magic, astrology, and paganism. The last line of the poem reads, "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" The Magi have returned to their old estates, the "summer palaces" of the first stanza that they have come to regret, but are "no longer at ease." This phrase has a double meaning: first, that the Magi do not take pleasure in the comforts of their old life, that they do not fall back into their old sinful ways; and, second, that the Magi no longer blend with their people, who are now
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