Poem of the Day: ‘The Oxen’

The 20th-century poet Philip Larkin is as responsible as anyone for the revival of the poetry of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). Hardy is still best known as a novelist, but he thought of himself primarily as a poet, and the revival of his poetry has led to a new appreciation by modern poets with a formalist interest. The Sun has already published “The Rejected Member’s Wife” as a Poem of the Day, along with “How Great My Grief.” Hardy’s corpus is so large that even the most devoted readers will find there a poem they didn’t know.Among his better known work is “The Oxen,” and it may be the best Christmas poem ever written. Or, at least, the best Christmas poem for its era — replete with the late Victorian/Edwardian sense of ambivalence about, and nostalgia for, a time when acceptance of faith seemed easier. A time when the world was thick with magic, and doubts were decided by a trust in the possibility of miracles.Published just before Christmas in 1915, “The Oxen” is written in ballad meter, its 4-foot lines alternating with 3-foot lines through the poem’s four quatrains. The story is drawn from an old Christmas legend from England’s West Country: The domestic animals that were near the manger in Bethlehem have passed down through the centuries the memory of that glory, and every Christmas Eve at midnight they kneel again in their stalls in homage to the newborn king. In Hardy’s poem, one of the old generation of a family around a farmhouse fire mentions, at midnight, that the animals are kneeling. And the adult narrator decides that even now, he would go to see.The Oxenby Thomas HardyChristmas 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.___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘The Oxen’

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