The Oxen

SATB a cappella

Text: Thomas Hardy  

Duration 4 mins

Thomas Hardy's The Oxen, written in 1915, was published Christmas Eve that same year. In this poem Hardy recollects that, as a child, it wouldn't have occurred to him, or anyone else, to doubt the local legend of the oxen kneeling in reverence on the onset of Christmas day. Perhaps partly because of the Great War, during which many old certainties were undermined, Hardy realises that such a 'fair fancy' would not really be taken seriously by many 'In these years' However, he acknowledges with a certain degree of nostalgia that his rational adult understanding of the world remains vulnerable to the thought of magically ‘Hoping it might be so’.

Computer-generated mock-up ~ for demo purposes only:

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.