The Journey of the Magi

"The Journey of the Magi" is Eliot's take on the birth of Christianity, so for this, I want you to go back and reread Browning's "Karshish" and Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine." Then tell us how this poem compares to those in terms of perspective (speaker, location, time) and attitude toward the event. Be careful about identifying speaker and author here: Eliot was a DEVOUT Anglican Christian.

The speaker is one of the Wise Men, the three kings that were to have witnessed the birth of Jesus Christ and given him presents. The trip was hard at times, but he does not regret it when looking back upon it. Seeing the Birth has changed him, called him to a different god from that of his people. This is why when he returns to his home, “[He] should be glad of another death.” I feel he was referring to his own when he will go to Heaven and be united with his God. Of course, maybe it’s a reference to Jesus’s later death that saves all of them.
I feel that this is very different from the previous pieces. “Karshish” took the point of view of an educated man who was taking Christianity with the logic of such a character. “Hymn” felt that this new religion was going to just leave out one day. I feel that the speaker in “Journey” has already accepted Christianity on to himself by the point we as the reader meet him. He might have almost felt forced into it by what he had witnessed with the Birth, feeling a sort of Death within him for his former beliefs. The speaker of “Hymn” wouldn’t hear of giving up his beliefs for some new religion trying to slip into his life. Then with “Karshish” I don’t think it was as much him feeling any one way on the religion itself as much as the facts of the situation.

First, take another look at at least the last lines of "Karshish"--isn't he INTRIGUED with the Christ idea?
Decent on "Hymn."
On this--interesting that you say this Magus was "forced into" his belief: what makes you say that? I didn't ask Ash or Erica about this, but what do you think of his rather lukewarm reaction to the Nativity?
An otherwise good read of his conflicting emotions: as I DID ask Ash or Erica, what do you think Eliot, a devout Christian, was trying to say or do with this poem?