Would the Gentile world by you
First-fruits pay of tribute due;
Or have Israel’s scatter’d race,
From their unknown hiding-place,
Sent to claim their part and right
In the Child new-born to-night?
An older poet than Trench, the seventeenth century George Wither, has woven some pretty fancies about the story of the wise men as it is told by Saint Matthew in the New Testament.
That so thy blessed birth, oh Christ,
Might through the world be spread about,
Thy Starre appeared in the East,