this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death

All this was a long time ago, I 
remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, 
certainly, 
We had evidence and no doubt. I had 
seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; 
this Birth was 
Hard and bitter agony for us, like 
Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these
Kingdoms, 
But no longer at ease here, in the old 
dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their 
gods.
I should be glad of another death.

from T. S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi