The Full Text of “The Oxen”
1Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
2“Now they are all on their knees,”
3An elder said as we sat in a flock
4By the embers in hearthside ease.
5We pictured the meek mild creatures where
6They dwelt in their strawy pen,
7Nor did it occur to one of us there
8To doubt they were kneeling then.
9So fair a fancy few would weave
10In these years! Yet, I feel,
11If someone said on Christmas Eve,
12“Come; see the oxen kneel,
13“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
14Our childhood used to know,”
15I should go with him in the gloom,
16Hoping it might be so.
The Full Text of “The Oxen”
1Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
2“Now they are all on their knees,”
3An elder said as we sat in a flock
4By the embers in hearthside ease.
5We pictured the meek mild creatures where
6They dwelt in their strawy pen,
7Nor did it occur to one of us there
8To doubt they were kneeling then.
9So fair a fancy few would weave
10In these years! Yet, I feel,
11If someone said on Christmas Eve,
12“Come; see the oxen kneel,
13“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
14Our childhood used to know,”
15I should go with him in the gloom,
16Hoping it might be so.
-
“The Oxen” Introduction
-
"The Oxen," by English writer Thomas Hardy, tells a deceptively simple tale of nostalgia, loss, faith, and doubt. The poem's speaker, looking back on their childhood, remembers when all their friends and family would gather around the fire on Christmas Eve to mark the chime of midnight. According to an old folk tradition, this was the moment when all the oxen in the barn would kneel to mark the birth of Christ. Nowadays, the speaker reflects, no one would tell—let alone believe—such a tale, as people don't share faith, tradition, stories, or community in quite the same way they once did. Longing for that long-ago shared certainty, the speaker looks into their own heart and finds, not an unshakeable belief, but a wistful "hop[e]" that the old story "might be so." Hardy first published this poem in the London Times on Christmas Eve, 1915.
-
-
“The Oxen” Summary
-
It was midnight on Christmas Eve. "All the oxen will be kneeling now," said an old person as we all gathered comfortably around the low fire.
We imagined the gentle oxen in their straw-strewn barn. None of us doubted for a second that they were kneeling.
Few people would tell that lovely, fanciful old story of oxen kneeling on Christmas these days! And yet: if someone came to me on Christmas Eve and said, "Come and see the oxen kneeling—
"Come see them kneeling at the lonely farm by the little valley that we knew so well in our childhood," I'm sure I'd follow him into the dark night, hoping that the story might be true.
-
-
“The Oxen” Themes
-
Faith, Innocence, and Disenchantment
Thomas Hardy's "The Oxen" tells a tale of fading faith and disillusioned innocence. The poem begins with the speaker's fond memory of a Christmas Eve in the English countryside, when their friends and family gathered around the fire in "hearthside ease," celebrating the holiday together. At the stroke of midnight, an "elder" declared that the oxen out in the barn must now be "on their knees," kneeling reverently to mark the beginning of Christmas Day and the birth of Jesus. Everyone by the fireside, the speaker recalls, accepted this old piece of folklore unquestioningly: it didn't occur to anyone "to doubt [the oxen] were kneeling then." Their faith in the elder's wisdom, in the tradition of the kneeling oxen, and in the idea that the whole natural world would respond to the holiness of Christmas was total and easy.
Nowadays, the speaker reflects, things have changed. Few people "in these years," they sigh, would repeat "so fair a fancy" (so lovely a story) as the tale of the kneeling oxen, and fewer still would believe in it. The speaker's world, in other words, has lost its sense of shared faith and shared trust. For that matter, the speaker has grown up; faith in tradition and in religion are no longer so simple for the speaker. The speaker finds that they're living in a more cynical, doubting world than they once did—and that they've changed to match it.
Nonetheless, the speaker longs for the comfort and beauty of the old stories, and hangs on to a glimmer of hope that there might be some truth in them. If someone came to them now and urged them to come and "see the oxen kneel" in the barn on Christmas Eve, they feel sure they would still go and take a look, "hoping it might be so." The speaker still wants to believe in the kneeling oxen, in other words, even if they no longer feel they'd be able to simply trust in the story without the evidence of their eyes.
The poem thus sighs over the world's (and the speaker's) loss of innocence: a world in which the tale of the oxen is just a discreditable "fancy" is a disenchanted place. At the same time, it honors the persistent power of traditional stories, whether folkloric or religious. Though the speaker can't go back to a world in which such stories are part of the bedrock of life, they can still hope that these stories have meaning, even if they can no longer take them for granted or fully embrace them.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
Tradition, Change, and Nostalgia
Looking back on memories of Christmas Eve in the English countryside, this poem's speaker expresses deep nostalgia for the customs of their childhood—and for a more innocent world in general. The speaker grew up in a time and place when rural communities lived close-knit lives woven together by folklore, faith, and a shared local language (which here appears in southwestern English dialect words like “barton,” meaning farm, and “coomb,” meaning valley). When an “elder” tells a traditional tale of oxen kneeling to welcome in Christmas Day, everyone around them takes the story on trust, believing it without needing to see it. Such seamless belief and countryside custom, the speaker implies, belongs to a lost world.
The time period in which this poem was written provides a clue to how that world was lost. Hardy published this poem in 1915, when World War I was raging across Europe, destroying the last vestiges of the 19th-century Victorian order. The Industrial Revolution had already done away with a lot of traditional rural ways of life by mechanizing crafts once done by hand, and the march of science had shaken dominant Christian certainties. While the speaker doesn’t address any of these changes directly in the poem, their lament that, “in these years,” no one believes in “so fair a fancy” as the tale of the kneeling oxen reflects a sense that a more down-to-earth time—but also a more magical one—has passed away.
Of course, the speaker has changed too: their nostalgia for a romantic rural past reflects a longing for the innocent world "our childhood used to know" as much as a massive shift in the ways of the world. A nostalgia for younger days, for a gentler and more trusting world, and for a stronger faith are all wrapped up together here.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Oxen”
-
Lines 1-4
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.“The Oxen” begins at a precise moment in time: “Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.” It’s the moment the clock strikes midnight on Christmas Eve—and thus the moment that Christmas Eve turns into Christmas Day.
At this moment, the speaker is gathered around the low embers of a fire with a “flock” of friends and family. In their “hearthside ease,” they’re cozy and comfortable together. But there’s a shiver of mystery in this warm scene. For as the clock chimes, one of the “elder[s]” among the group declares: “‘Now they are all on their knees.’” Everyone here, this elder is sure, will know which “they” they’re talking about—though perhaps the reader won’t, at first. The poem’s title gives the clue: the elder is alluding to an old English folk tradition in which oxen are said to kneel reverently to welcome in Christmas Day and the birth of Jesus (who was traditionally said to have arrived on the stroke of midnight).
Right away, then, the poem evokes a world of rural community, shared understanding, and ancient, worn-in traditions. This group of people, readers gather, must sit around the fire to welcome in Christmas morning every year. Someday the young folks will become the elders and tell new generations the story of the kneeling oxen. This is a community linked by steady belief.
The speaker underscores that sense of shared faith by describing the people huddled around the fire as a “flock”—a word that might equally be used to describe a group of birds or sheep and a Christian congregation. The metaphor of people as sheep watched over by a shepherd is an old, old Christian idea (from the biblical description of Christ as the “good shepherd” to the word “pastor,” which means shepherd). Here, the metaphor of the flock connects the people inside to the oxen outside in more ways than one. The rural, agricultural world and the world of religious faith interweave: the people are like the oxen, and the oxen know it’s Christmas.
The poem’s shape helps to build this atmosphere of sturdy rural community and old ways. The poem is written in ballad meter: quatrains (or four-line stanzas) that alternate between lines of four beats and lines of three, like so:
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”The same old form often turns up in folk songs and nursery rhymes. This poem, telling a story about the telling of a story, itself sounds like part of a folk tradition.
The speaker’s language, though, is a little more delicate than one might expect from a folk song. The nostalgic vision of “hearthside ease” and the elder’s precisely reported words are more like something out of a novel than a ballad. This little incongruity is the first hint of a tension between earthy tradition and the era in which this poem was written: the early 20th century, not long after the outset of World War I.
-
Lines 5-8
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. -
Lines 9-10
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! -
Lines 10-16
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 Oxen” Symbols
-
The Kneeling Oxen
The kneeling oxen are a symbol of a coherent world, a close-knit community, and a shared worldview—now lost. As the old tale an “elder” alludes to at the beginning of the poem has it, oxen reverently kneel at midnight on Christmas Eve, honoring the birth of Jesus. In this vision, the natural world and human world are all part of one grand cosmic drama: even the cows know to kneel when God incarnates.
The speaker’s community is similarly assured of their place in the cosmos, sharing an easy and unquestioning faith in the story of the oxen and the Christmas story alike. Nobody needs to go outside to check if the oxen are kneeling; everyone, as the speaker observes, simply believes it to be so. The faithful oxen themselves might thus be read as a symbol of the community: acting and thinking as one, all moved by the same beliefs. To the speaker’s sorrow, this kind of faith now seems to have eroded, unable to survive a more doubting, questioning modern world. The story of the oxen now seems like a mere “fancy,” a fairy tale.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
-
-
“The Oxen” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Allusion
“The Oxen” alludes to an old English folk tradition. According to legend, just as the clock struck midnight on Christmas Eve, all the oxen in all the barns would reverently kneel to mark the beginning of Christmas Day and the birth of Jesus.
This story links the cow-studded English rural landscape to Christian tradition, in which an ox and a donkey (often read as symbols of the Jewish and Gentile peoples of the world, respectively) were said to have watched over the infant Jesus’s improvised feed-trough cradle. The link between the mythic and the rustic underscores one of the speaker’s big ideas: once upon a time, the holy, folkloric, and everyday worlds intermingled. People felt that their religion was a more intimate part of their lives, and they connected to the world and each other through faith and storytelling.
By calling up memories of this old story, the speaker shows just how much the world has changed since they were young. Few people tell stories like that anymore, they sigh, and fewer still believe them. But the speaker still feels the value of folklore: if someone told them that the oxen were kneeling in the barn today, they know, they would go to witness this quiet, down-to-earth miracle (though they would no longer be able to take it on faith that it had actually happened).
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Alliteration
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Metaphor
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Colloquialism
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
-
"The Oxen" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Twelve of the clock
- Embers
- Hearthside ease
- Meek
- Their strawy pen
- So fair a fancy
- Barton
- Yonder coomb
- I should go with him
- Gloom
-
That is, twelve midnight—the moment when Christmas Eve becomes Christmas Day.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Oxen”
-
Form
"The Oxen" uses a deceptively simple form to tell a subtle tale. The poem is built from four quatrains (or four-line stanzas) and written in ballad meter (that is, alternating lines of four beats, as in "Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock" and three beats, as in "Hoping it might be so"). This old shape, familiar from folk songs and nursery rhymes, makes the speaker’s memories of country tradition feel like part of that tradition themselves.
However, as the speaker observes in lines 9-10, “So fair a fancy” (so lovely and fanciful a tale) as the story of the oxen kneeling at Christmas is, “in these years,” a rare thing to find. In other words, people don’t tell or believe stories like this so often these days. The speaker is living in a more hard-nosed, cynical, and divided world than the one they grew up in.
The speaker’s choice of an old-fashioned, traditional form here suits the folkloric tale they recall. But it also expresses their nostalgia for a more romantic, perhaps more magical past: their wish to hold onto the world of old songs, old traditions, and old beliefs they remember from their childhood. A "hop[e]" that the story of the kneeling oxen (and perhaps, by extension, the Christian nativity story itself) "might be so" has replaced the speaker's once-unquestioning faith that it is so.
-
Meter
“The Oxen” uses a form of ballad meter: the poem’s four-line stanzas (or quatrains) alternate between lines with four stresses and lines with three. Take stanza 1:
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.Hardy uses an accentual meter, meaning the lines don't stick to one regular type of foot (like the iamb or the dactyl), but are measured out simply by the number of beats. Accentual meter often turns up in folk songs and nursery rhymes; here, its naturalistic flexibility suits a homespun tale, reflecting the speaker’s nostalgia for the countryside of their childhood (and smuggling some complex ideas about disillusionment, doubt, and hope in a plain wrapping).
Accentual meter also allows Hardy to change up the poem's rhythms to fit the poem’s mood. The line “Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock,” for instance, bustles with unstressed syllables, creating a cozy feeling that suits the image of a “flock” of friends and family snug around their low fire. Compare that to the simplicity of the speaker’s final words: “Hoping it might be so.” That uncluttered line evokes the speaker’s plain, pure longing to recapture a faith they once took for granted.
-
Rhyme Scheme
“The Oxen” uses a simple, alternating ABAB rhyme scheme in each stanza. That singsong pattern feels musical and almost childlike—a fitting effect for a poem about old traditions and childhood memories.
Hardy enriches this straightforward pattern with lots of harmonious assonance. Listen, for instance, to the texture of the poem’s closing lines:
"'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."Hardy echoes and deepens the B rhyme here—know / so—through the assonance of “lonely,” “go,” and “hoping,” running a long /o/ sound all through the stanza. Perhaps readers might hear a sigh of reverence in these words: a soft, drawn-out “Oh” of wonder and hope.
-
-
“The Oxen” Speaker
-
The poem’s speaker is a wistful, nostalgic person. Looking back on their memories of Christmas Eve in their countryside childhood, they long for the days when people told—and believed—lovely old stories, like the tale that oxen knelt when midnight struck and marked the beginning of Christmas Day. “In these years,” the speaker sadly reflects, few people still remember “so fair a fancy” (so lovely a story) as that one, and fewer still believe it.
Though the speaker is an old romantic, they’re not a fantasist. If someone told them the oxen were kneeling in the barn they remember from their childhood, they say, they’d still follow to take a look, “hoping it might be so.” Though the world has changed and the speaker has grown up, the speaker still believes in the value and the beauty of old tales. Their faith is no longer so deep and unwavering that they absolutely know they’ll see the oxen kneel if they go to the barn on Christmas Eve, but it’s certainly strong enough to keep them in “hop[e].”
Readers might see some of Hardy’s own character in this speaker: not just in the poem’s dialect words, which come from Hardy’s native Dorset, but in the speaker’s mingled melancholy and wonder.
-
-
“The Oxen” Setting
-
“The Oxen” begins in the English countryside at a very specific time: “Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.” In other words, it’s midnight, the exact moment when Christmas Eve clicks over into Christmas Day—and, traditionally, the exact moment that Christ was born. The speaker, cozy by the fire with friends and family, listens to “an elder,” one of the old folks, saying that the oxen in the barn must be kneeling at this very moment: a folk belief that the speaker recalls with reverence. The speaker’s simple, hushed reporting—the firelight, the wise elder telling the tale, the sense of mystery—suggests the story left a deep impression on them.
The poem’s action then leaps forward. All at once, the speaker is far from this scene, looking back nostalgically on the days when people used to really believe in “so fair a fancy.” The world the speaker writes from now has changed; no one earnestly thinks the oxen kneel at Christmas now.
This poem was first published on Christmas Eve, 1915, and it reflects on Hardy’s own times. On that Christmas Eve, World War I was raging across Europe, and a general horror and disillusionment had replaced the optimistic, expansive mood of England in the 19th century. This speaker’s melancholy sense of loss and their dogged urge to hang onto old stories captures the air of Hardy’s times.
Some of the language here also reveals Hardy’s attachment to a specific place: Dorset, the county in the southwest of England where he was born and raised. The dialect words “barton” (a farm) and “coomb” (a valley) tie this poem to the countryside Hardy knew.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “The Oxen”
-
Literary Context
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English poet and a novelist, known for his passionate opposition to the cruelty and hypocrisy of the buttoned-up Victorian world he was born into. Though Hardy is now most famous for novels like Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, those frank and shocking books weren't especially well-received during his lifetime, and he made his reputation through his poetry.
Born three years into the reign of Queen Victoria, Hardy lived through an era of intense change, watching as high Victorian propriety and Edwardian decadence gave way to the horrific disillusionments of World War I. This poem, which first appeared in The Times on Christmas Eve 1915, reflects his painful awareness of a changed world.
Hardy was deeply influenced by his rural upbringing in Dorset, a county in the southwest of England. (This poem's use of old Dorset dialect words like "barton" and "coomb" reflects his roots.) Many of Hardy's books and poems are set in a fictionalized version of his home county, which he renamed "Wessex" and elaborated as thoroughly as Tolkien elaborated his Middle-earth.
Hardy's friend William Barnes, who was similarly interested in rural identity and dialect, was a big influence on him. In his passionate denouncement of sexual hypocrisy and misogyny, Hardy also followed in the footsteps of thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Hardy was well-known during his own lifetime, a public figure as well as a literary man. His political outrage and naturalistic ear for voice influenced any number of later writers, from Yeats to Woolf to Sassoon.
Historical Context
Hardy published this poem in 1915, a year after World War I began. World War I was known, at the time it was fought, as "the war to end all wars" (a phrase that would prove tragically inaccurate when World War II broke out a generation later). It began when assassin Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which ruled a large section of Central and Eastern Europe at the time). Austria-Hungary accused their enemy Serbia of masterminding this assassination; Germany supported Austria-Hungary; Russia supported Serbia. Soon, chains of pre-existing alliances had dragged nearly all of Europe (and countries beyond) into bloody trench warfare, a snowballing catastrophe that would claim millions of lives.
This disaster shook Europe in more ways than one. Hardy was born in 1840, just a few years after the beginning of the Victorian era. He lived most of his life under the reign of Queen Victoria, a period during which Britain became the most powerful country in the world. The arts and sciences blossomed, and Britain's national mood was generally one of confidence and optimism (alongside anxiety about economic inequality, the destruction of the countryside, and the changing role of women, among many other flavors of upheaval). The bloodshed of World War I undermined all the old Victorian certainties, leaving many people—Hardy among them—feeling dispirited, grief-stricken, and adrift. This poem's nostalgia captures an early 20th-century longing for lost tradition, lost faith, and lost lives.
-
-
More “The Oxen” Resources
-
External Resources
-
The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
-
A Short Biography — Learn more about Hardy via the Poetry Foundation.
-
Moments of Vision — Examine an early edition of the book—one of Hardy's latest—in which this poem was first collected.
-
The Thomas Hardy Society — Visit the website of the Thomas Hardy Society to find a wealth of information on Hardy's life, work, and legacy.
-
Hardy's Gloom — Take a look at an infographic that assesses (and pokes mild fun at) Hardy's famously bleak worldview.
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Thomas Hardy
-
