Thomas Hardy's "The Oxen" appeared in the London Times on Dec. 24, 1915. This was the second Christmas of the Great War and it was clear that hope for a quick and righteous victory of that conflict would go unfulfilled. Soon Wilfrid Owen, one of the great English war poets, would report on the "hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language ... everything unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug-outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights on earth. In poetry we call them the most glorious."

The skepticism and disenchantment concerning glory and patriotism produced in the generation of the First World War were attitudes the 75-year-old Hardy had been steeped in all his life. A native of the harsh Dorset countryside, Hardy deeply distrusted Victorian pieties regarding God and country. His dark skepticism had gotten him into trouble with reviewers of his novels, so much so that he gave up writing fiction and put all of his considerable energies into poetry.

"The Oxen" is one of the most powerful poems about the Nativity in the English language because it refuses to serve up an angels-around-the-manger version of Christ's birth. Additionally, it avoids a religious or doctrinal telling for a folk tale that held animals kneeled in adoration to mark the moment of Christ's birth each year.

Hardy uses a traditional English ballad stanza of alternating end rhymes (clock / knees, flock / ease) to recount what is most likely his own memory of having sat spellbound, "By the embers in hearthside ease," while an "elder" told the story of the "meek mild creatures." He also relies on the Dorset words "barton" (farmyard) and "coomb" (valley) to contrast a more peaceful rural past with his wartime present.

Hardy's wistful and beautiful remembrance recalls both the magic and innocence of childhood that once allowed him to believe "they [the creatures] were kneeling then." But now "In these years!" -- which are the years of war and his old age -- Hardy has trouble imagining anyone trying to weave such a fanciful story.

The power of this poem comes not from Hardy's inability to believe in the quaint folk tale but from his desire, in spite of the war and his age, to regain his innocence, to return to what "Our childhood used to know." Yearning and desire -- doubt bolstered by hope -- give the poem its difficult poignancy. In this way, "The Oxen" mirrors more accurately the battles we fight to keep our spirits alive and hopeful in difficult times, and shows that the season of "glad tidings, comfort and joy" does not, regardless of what we might hope, restore our innocence.

Michael Collier is Maryland's poet laureate. "Poet's Corner" appears monthly in Arts & Society.

The Oxen

By Thomas Hardy

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.