A Christmas Poem from Matt: The Magi, by William Butler Yeats
Harry Potter and the Sacred Text
Vanessa Zoltan, Casper ter Kuile & Ariana Nedelman
4.7 • 6.8K Ratings
🗓️ 25 December 2023
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
Every Christmas, we like to share a favorite poem. This year it's 'The Magi' by William Butler Yeats.
We'll be back with our regularly scheduled episodes on January 5th. Happy Holidays!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello Harry Potter and the Sacred Text listeners. We hope that you are having a |
| 0:04.2 | wonderful holiday whether you are celebrating Christmas or maybe out at the movies |
| 0:08.1 | observing this day off. Whatever you're doing we hope you're doing it with people |
| 0:12.4 | you love and that you're doing we hope you're doing it with people you love and that you're doing |
| 0:13.9 | it in a way that feels restful and joyful and full of the piece of the season and I just have a poem |
| 0:19.3 | I'd like to share with you this is a favorite Christmas poem of mine. This is a poem called |
| 0:23.4 | the Magi by William Butler Yates. The poet is looking at some statues of these |
| 0:28.6 | three wise men who came who are said to have come from the east to meet Jesus and this is |
| 0:34.1 | Yates just kind of looking at some statues of them and being poetic about those |
| 0:38.1 | statues. Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, in their stiff painted clothes, the pale |
| 0:46.5 | unsatisfied ones appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky, with all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones, and all |
| 0:56.0 | their helms of silver hovering side by side, and all their eyes still fixed, hoping |
| 1:02.2 | to find once more being by Calvary's turbulence |
| 1:05.7 | unsatisfied the uncontrollable mystery on the beastial floor. |
| 1:11.8 | For me what's really beautiful about this poem is this kind of couplet at the end that they have these |
| 1:16.8 | magi, these statuary magi whose eyes are fixed permanently forever on the |
| 1:21.5 | uncontrollable mystery of the floor around the Christ child and |
| 1:24.9 | there's this line in between which says that they are unsatisfied by Calvary's turbulence. |
| 1:29.8 | Calvary is the place that Jesus was crucified. And so there's this idea that |
| 1:34.0 | reckoning with the death of Jesus we always look forward to the birth and we want to |
| 1:38.4 | look past the death of him in order to fix it upon the birth and Yates I think is reminding us that for Jesus as for all of us birth and death go hand to hand and that we have to hold the mystery of these things together. |
| 1:49.0 | That's a Christmas poem by W.B. Yates, which is one of my favorites. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you have a |
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