Star-watchers on the road

Star-watchers on the road, out from their Eastern lands,

Are following a special star 'cross rivers, rocks, and sands.

What do they hope to see? What means this stellar sign

To scholars who are traveling far because these stars align?

 

They travel so because they take this star as news

That one now born has come to be a new King of the Jews. 

Their homage they will pay, and gifts they will bestow;

And then, their work complete and done, with gladness they will go.

 

So surely they must seek a palace grand and fair,

For where else might a newborn king be housed and fed but there?

This wondrous guiding star must lead them to a place

Of grandeur fine, and not a town of humble peasant grace.

 

And so they journey on, this special child to find.

They travel with this single goal and regal place in mind.

How can they comprehend what they are yet to see?

And will they come to understand this holy mystery?

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, December 2022.

MUSIC: Tune TERRA BEATA, Franklin L. Sheppard, 1915.

 

 

 

Apparently the "twelve hymns of Christmas" are going to continue, and at this point (being halfway there) why not? What about those Magi traveling so far to see this "king of the Jews"? What are they expecting to see at this stage of their journey?