Hardy’s “The Oxen” — An Agnostic’s Christmas Poem

In Thomas Hardy’s poem a speaker contemplates the evolution of his unbelief and that of his family and society as they sit around a Christmas fire. The theme depends upon an old myth that claimed that the animal kingdom, farm animals, knelt on Christmas Eve in honor of the Christ-child’s birth.  Hardy uses the myth and Christmas itself metaphorically for the Christian faith.

 

First he remembers how once upon a time the “elders” would announce the fact that the time had come and that the animals were on their knees. No one, including the speaker, considered doubting.

 

But time has passed, the speaker is older, and he now calls the idea a “fancy” no longer believable. And yet, in keeping with the many emotions stirred by the season, he wistfully notes that if someone wanted to go and see the animals kneeling, he would go, and he would hope that they really would be.  In other words, he longed for his hope to be fulfilled and therefore the faith of his youth affirmed.

 

However, the tone of the poem assures that the speaker’s doubt and his society’s are too strong and have been accepted too long. His doubt will remain, and Christmas will be a day different from the others simply because of nostalgia.

 

The Oxen      

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.