poem: A weekly poem, read by the author.

The Oxen

By Thomas Hardy
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2003, at 8:56 AM ET

Listen to Robert Pinsky reading Hardy's poem.


Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) can write about nostalgia, but he does so without sentimentality. In his Christmas poem "The Oxen" he also writes directly, but with nuance. The legend that the beasts kneel at midnight on Christmas Eve is treated with dignity, as are the regional dialect terms "barton" (a farmyard) and "coomb" (a valley).
—Robert Pinsky


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.

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