The Magi

By W. B. Yeats

“The Magi” is a short lyric by W. B. Yeats in which the three wise men of the Christmas story drift across the sky, still searching. It first appeared in the Chicago magazine Poetry in May 1914, and it was collected the same year in Responsibilities, printed by his sister Elizabeth’s Cuala Press. In eight lines and a single sentence, it turns a Nativity scene into an image of restless spiritual hunger, and many readers see it as an early sketch for “The Second Coming.”

Our reading is that Yeats’s Magi are not pilgrims who found what they were looking for, but seekers who never stopped. He leaves the star, the gifts, and the journey offstage and shows only their faces, still unsatisfied. The poem asks what would happen if the story that began in the stable and ended at Calvary did not answer the question it raised, and it pictures the wise men waiting for the mystery to begin again.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · Related Poems

Summary

The speaker says that now, as always, he can picture the Magi in his imagination. They appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky, dressed in stiff, painted clothes, like figures in an old church picture.

Their faces are ancient and worn, like stones beaten by rain, and their silver helmets hover side by side. Their eyes are still fixed on something ahead of them.

The last two lines explain what they want. Unsatisfied by the “turbulence” of Calvary, where Christ was crucified, they hope to find once more the “uncontrollable mystery” they first saw in the stable at Bethlehem, on its animal-trodden floor.

The Poem

The text below follows Responsibilities and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1916), as transcribed by Project Gutenberg (eBook #36865). In that volume, “The Magi” is printed as the first of a numbered pair, followed by “The Dolls.”

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Background

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865, and by 1914, he was the leading poet of the Irish Literary Revival. His early work, steeped in Irish myth and legend, had a dreamy, twilight quality. By his late forties, however, he was writing harder and plainer verse.

Responsibilities, the book that collected “The Magi,” marks that change. Many of its poems quarrel with Dublin, taking on the 1913 Lockout and the dispute over Hugh Lane’s offer of paintings to a city gallery.

In May 1914, Harriet Monroe’s magazine Poetry printed a group of twelve Yeats poems, including “The Magi” and “A Coat.” That year, the Cuala Press, run by Yeats’s sister Elizabeth, issued Responsibilities: Poems and a Play in an edition of 400 copies. Macmillan published a trade edition, Responsibilities and Other Poems, in 1916.

Yeats explained the poem in a note to “The Dolls.” After finishing that poem, he wrote, he looked up into the blue of the sky and “suddenly imagined” stiff figures in procession. He recognized them as the image the blue sky habitually suggested to him and, “looking for a second fable,” called them the Magi.

In “The Dolls,” the dolls in a doll-maker’s house shriek at the arrival of a human baby. The Magi, by contrast, long for exactly that kind of birth. Yeats called them “complimentary forms” to the enraged dolls, spelled that way in the 1916 edition.

Yeats won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, and he died in the south of France on January 28, 1939. His later poem “The Second Coming,” first published in 1920, returns to Bethlehem and to the idea of a new revelation.

Analysis and Themes

The poem is short, but it packs a whole view of religious history into one sentence. Three things matter most: what the Magi look like, what has left them unsatisfied, and what they are looking for.

Figures From a Painted Picture

The Magi do not arrive as living travelers. They wear “stiff, painted clothes,” which suggests figures from a stained-glass window, a fresco, or an altarpiece, and their faces are “like rain-beaten stones,” like weathered statues on a church front.

This is art, not scripture. Yeats sees the Magi in his “mind’s eye,” and his note admits that blue sky habitually called up the image. The poem is about an inner vision as much as about the Bible story.

Unsatisfied by Calvary

The word “unsatisfied” appears twice, in line 2 and line 7, framing the whole vision. The second time, Yeats explains it: the Magi are unsatisfied “by Calvary’s turbulence,” the violent events of the crucifixion.

That is a startling thought for a Christmas poem. In the Gospel of Matthew, the wise men find the child and go home. Yeats imagines them looking on through the whole Christian story and finding its end, the death on the cross, not enough.

The Uncontrollable Mystery

What they want is “the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor,” the moment when the divine entered the world in a stable among animals. “Bestial” here means belonging to beasts, but it also carries a hint of something wild and not quite human.

“Uncontrollable” suggests that a true revelation cannot be managed by priests, doctrine, or reason. The Magi are “hoping to find once more” not the comfort of a settled religion, but the shock of its beginning.

A Prelude to “The Second Coming”

Many critics read the poem as an early form of an idea Yeats later built into a system: that history moves in great cycles, each opened by a violent new revelation. In “The Second Coming,” a “rough beast” slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.

Read that way, the Magi are waiting for the next birth, not the old one. The poem does not say whether that birth will be holy or terrible, and the word “bestial” leaves room for both.

Form and Technique

“The Magi” is eight lines long and rhymes ABAB CDCD. “Eye” and “sky,” “side” and “unsatisfied,” and “more” and “floor” are full rhymes, while “ones” and “stones” make a slant rhyme. The whole poem is a single sentence.

The lines are long and loose, mostly with six beats each, as in “ap-PEAR and DIS-ap-PEAR in the BLUE DEPTH of the SKY.” The slow, heavy rhythm suits a procession and keeps the figures hovering rather than marching.

Repetition does much of the work. Lines 4 to 6 begin “With all their,” “And all their,” and “And all their,” piling up faces, helmets, and eyes as if the speaker were scanning the figures one by one. The repeated “unsatisfied” ties the opening image to the closing explanation.

The syntax holds back its meaning until the end. The main verb, “Appear,” comes in line 3, and the object of the Magi’s search arrives only in the final line, so the reader, like the Magi, has to wait for the mystery.

Sound matters, too. Line 8 sets the long, many-syllabled “uncontrollable mystery” against the short, earthy “bestial floor,” so the line itself stages the meeting of spirit and animal matter.

Notable Lines

Three passages carry most of the poem’s power.

Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones

Lines 1 to 2

The opening makes the vision permanent: “Now as at all times.” The Magi are not remembered once but are always present in the speaker’s imagination, which suggests that the hunger they stand for is permanent, too.

With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,

Line 4

The simile turns the wise men into weathered stone figures. They are old, patient, and worn by time, more like monuments than men.

Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Lines 7 to 8

The closing lines carry the poem’s meaning and its puzzle. Calvary was supposed to fulfill the story that began in the stable, but for these seekers, it was only turbulence, and they want the beginning again.

Themes

Four ideas run through the poem’s eight lines.

Spiritual Hunger

The Magi are defined by what they lack. Their fixed eyes and repeated dissatisfaction make them figures of a longing that no answer has yet fulfilled.

Revelation

The poem treats the birth in the stable as an “uncontrollable mystery,” something that breaks into the world rather than being explained by it. Yeats suggests that such moments are what people most want, and what an established religion cannot keep.

Cycles of History

The phrase “once more” implies repetition. The Magi wait for history to come round again, an idea Yeats developed in later poems and in his prose book A Vision (1925).

Art and Imagination

The Magi exist “in the mind’s eye,” dressed like painted figures. The poem is partly about how sacred images live on in art and imagination long after the events behind them.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “The Magi.”

Who Wrote “The Magi”?

W. B. Yeats (1865–1939), the Irish poet and dramatist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. The poem first appeared in the Chicago magazine Poetry in May 1914, and it was collected the same year in Responsibilities: Poems and a Play, printed by the Cuala Press in Dublin.

Who Are the Magi in Yeats’s Poem?

They are the wise men from the East who, in the Gospel of Matthew, follow a star to Bethlehem and bring gifts to the infant Jesus. Yeats does not retell that story. Instead, he shows them as ancient, painted figures hovering in the sky, still searching long after their journey is over.

What Does “Calvary’s Turbulence” Mean?

Calvary is the hill outside Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified, and “Calvary’s turbulence” refers to the violence and upheaval of the crucifixion. The Magi are “by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,” meaning that the end of Christ’s story did not give them what they had glimpsed at its beginning.

What Is “the Uncontrollable Mystery on the Bestial Floor”?

It is the birth of Christ in a stable, on a floor shared with animals. Yeats calls it “uncontrollable” because a true revelation cannot be tamed or explained, and the Magi hope to see something like it “once more.” Many readers take this as a hint of a new revelation still to come, an idea Yeats explored later in “The Second Coming.”

How Is “The Magi” Connected to “The Dolls”?

Yeats wrote the two poems as a pair. In a note, he said that after writing “The Dolls,” he imagined stiff figures in procession in the blue sky and, looking for a second fable, called them the Magi. In “The Dolls,” the dolls are disgusted by a human baby, while the Magi long for a holy birth.

Glossary

The poem is brief, but a few of its words carry a great deal of weight.

• mind’s eye (line 1): The imagination; the power to see pictures in one’s head.
• painted clothes (line 2): Clothing like that of figures in a painting, mosaic, or stained-glass window.
• unsatisfied (lines 2 and 7): Not fulfilled; still wanting something.
• rain-beaten (line 4): Worn by rain, like old stone carvings.
• helms (line 5): Helmets; here, perhaps the crowns or headdresses of the kings.
• Calvary (line 7): The hill outside Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified.
• turbulence (line 7): Violent disturbance or upheaval.
• bestial (line 8): Belonging to beasts; here, the stable floor where Christ was born among animals.

Related Poems

If “The Magi” speaks to you, these poems share its wise men, its Nativity, or its sense of a world waiting for revelation.

• The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats: Yeats’s later vision of a new and terrible birth heading toward Bethlehem.
• Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot: One of the wise men looks back on the journey and finds that the birth felt like a death.
• The Oxen by Thomas Hardy: A Christmas Eve legend remembered by a speaker who wishes he could still believe it.
• On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity by John Milton: A grand ode on the birth in the stable and the old gods it drives away.
• The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell: A visionary Christmas poem in which the infant Christ appears burning in the winter air.