Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
Credits
Thomas Hardy was a Victorian and Edwardian English writer, celebrated for novels such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, as well as a substantial body of poetry. "The Oxen" was first published in The Times on Christmas Eve 1915, during the First World War — a context that lends its quiet yearning for lost innocence an added, poignant weight.
