The Oxen by Thomas Hardy
Hardy not big on rocking around the Christmas tree. Bittersweet more his thing.
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.
The Context
The Oxen was first published in the (London) Times on Christmas Eve, 1915. It came at a moment when the breakdown of the world Hardy had grown up in was accelerating.
The war was going badly, settling into grinding trench warfare with no prospect of the swift victory promised a year earlier. As casualties mounted in France, bombs began to rain down from rudimentary aircraft onto defenceless cities.
In London the gentlemanly Asquith government will soon fall. Its replacement will enable the state to seize control of agriculture in the service of the war effort. The poet responds by retreating to the world his Dorset childhood.
The Oxen (1915) is nostalgic in the original sense, contemplating his earlier loss of religious faith with a viscerally sweet sadness.
About The Oxen
‘In the gospels there is no mention of animals — it’s an invention’ Pope Benedict XVI
Oxen were not physically present that night in Bethlehem but their metaphorical power endures. In tens of thousands Nativity of images they giving physical form to a sense of awe in the presence of God. This is expressed in a myth that has passed through countless generations.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
It is important to recognised that all those attending do not contemplate this as a rational statement of fact. They suspend their disbelief. Or perhaps more precisely undergo what Kierkegaard calls ‘a leap of faith’.
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
The poet shares this visceral reverence, instinctively surrendering to his lost faith. In that moment, he believes again in the redemptive power of the season. His yearning is crystallised in that beautiful final line.
