The Oxon Thomas Hardy

 Dear Reader,

Isn't it astonishing how quickly the year goes by?  So it is Christmas time again and I thought I would put one of my favourite poems of Thomas Hardy up on the blog this week. I hope you like it.

I am really feeling much better now except for a hacking cough which apparently won't be gone until the spring reaches us again.  There are so many horrible things going about it seems including filling the hospitals with flu victims. I dress each morning with the weather in mind because it can be hot one day and cold the next.

The poetry muse left me when I was ill, my mind a blank.  But, with luck, after the New Year I shall start again with some new material.   I hope I will be able to do this because it is not easy to produce good poetry or indeed any poetry!

I am still bemused by the people who read this blog.  In eight years I have never worked out who it is and why they read it.  For instance in the last two weeks I have had over 300 readers from Singapore.  Why would people in Singapore want to read it?  And also several from Hong Kong.   Well it is lovely that you do whoever you are and thank you for your support.

Have a very Happy Christmas and may 2025 bring you all the joy and happiness you could wish for.

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From Dorothy Wordsworth  1802 December 25th in Westmorland

'It is today Christmas Day, Saturday 25th December 1802.   I am thirty-one years of age.   It is a dull, frosty day.'

 

From Francis  Kilvert  1870 December 25th in Radnorshire

 '.......intense frost.   I sat down in my bath upon a sheet of thick ice which broke in the middle into large pieces whilst sharp points and jagged edges stuck all round the sides of the tub like chevaux de frise, not particularly comforting to the naked thighs....  The morning was most brilliant.....the road sparkled with millions of rainbows, the seven colours gleaming in every glittering point of hoar frost.'

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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.

1915

 

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With very best wishes to you, Patricia