Who wrote the poem "The Journey of the Magi"?

First published in 1927, "The Journey of the Magi" is a narrative poem by the Anglo-American poet Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) based on the story recounted in St Matthew's gospel of the journey of the Magi (also known as the Three Kings, or the Three Wise Men) to bring their symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, to the infant Jesus. It is perhaps worth noting that "Magi", although widely used in Christianity, relates to a Persian word for "magician".

It is told in the first person, in blank verse, and although Eliot was a fairly recent convert to Christianity, is by no means a simplistic devotional poem. He also omits several elements that will be familiar to those of us who know more traditional presentations of the Christmas story - notably the "star of wonder".

It was conceived as one of five interconnected poems, but only "The Journey of the Magi" has achieved lasting fame and popularity. It was first published along with specially commissioned illustrations by the house of Faber & Gwyer, later to become Faber & Faber.

For those of all faiths or none it is a haunting and evocative work, not least because of symbolic sightings of "three trees" and "pieces of silver" - prophetic visions whose meaning we, of course, know, but the narrator does not, and because of the sense of the Magi ending up feeling as exiles in their own land after what they have experienced.