Poem for December: 'The Oxen' by Thomas Hardy

 The Oxen

   By Thomas Hardy (1915;1917)

     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.

  Horst Meller and Rudolf Sühnel, British and American classical poems,

      Georg Westermann Verlag 1966

      Annotations:

     barton – farmyard building, coomb – a valley between steep hills.

    Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English poet and novelist