Hardy’s Christmas poem ‘The Oxen’ refers to an old Christmas folk legend Hardy knew as a child. The descendants of the oxen who had witnessed the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem were believed to still kneel to commemorate the birth of Jesus every Christmas Eve at midnight, just as his ancestors had done at that time.
The rich and vivid imagery of the poem as a whole is atmospheric. It begins with a simple statement that nicely sets the Christmas scene: ‘Christmas Eve, and twelve o’clock.’ Most people have some idea of what midnight on Christmas Eve means to them. The magical childhood wonder of Christmas, or simply the warm joy and goodwill to all men who feel Christmas, is most likely evoked by this powerful statement.
As well as Christmas Eve being a main feature of the poem, the words ’embers in the hearth by the fireplace’ make one imagine the heat and that the ‘flock’ had been huddled there all night. Children are also thought of imagining oxen with childish innocence. In one’s mind the old man can be heard saying “Now they are all on their knees”. And, of course, the powerful metaphorical personification of oxen conjures up images of them kneeling on Christmas Eve before baby Jesus in his manger.
But halfway through the poem, doubt is invoked in the belief about the kneeling oxen. It jumps forward a few years in the third verse, where the cynicism of war is introduced with the metaphorical statement “So beautiful that few would weave in these years!” The Legend of the Christmas Oxen was by then generally seen as a fictional story. People had become tormented with cynicism by the horror of the First World War, which was in full swing at the time of the poem’s publication in 1915.
The lovely suave alliteration ‘meek suave’ in the second line is contrasted here with that of ‘fair a fancy few’, ‘f’ for ‘father’ offering a more cynical edge than ‘m’ for mother. And the personification ‘Our childhood used to know’ hints that those days must be truly over: it wasn’t even the people themselves who ‘used to know’, just their childhood.
Some critics say that this poem ends on a somber note, with the warmth of the fire and childlike innocence in the first half contrasting with the war and the cold, “lonely” “sadness” outside in the second half. But for me it retains the magic of Christmas in general. The use of overlapping, especially between the last two lines, subtly heightens the reader’s suspense until the end of the poem where he says: ‘I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping so’. A loss is mourned, but there is still hope and therefore Christmas cheer! This kind of hope in the face of war reminds me of the Christmas Truce when soldiers mingled peacefully in no man’s land along the Western Front on Christmas Day 1914.
The poem has a catchy rhythmic structure with four lines in the form of 2 couplets that rhyme each line in an abab rhyme scheme.
For a much fuller analysis of the poem with some excellent points linking it to the war, see http://rawrthespot.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/poem-analysis-essay-oxen.html
The above is my own interpretation only and is not intended to be a definitive and comprehensive analysis of how Hardy intended the poem to read. Merry Christmas to all poetry critics, especially those who completely disagree with me!