While not as well known as Clement Moore’s “A Visit From St. Nicholas” or Eugene Fields’ “Jest ‘Fore Christmas,” Thomas Hardy’s little poem, “The Oxen,” is a wonderful Christmas story. It deals with the old country legend that at midnight on Christmas Eve the animals in the stable kneel in honor of the birth of the Christ child.

Hardy, who was born in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England, was a man of extraordinary literary talent, who exercised his great skills right up until his death at the age of 88. He is best known as a novelist, having written such classics as Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. But by all accounts, his first love was his poetry, which he began writing in earnest at the age of 60; his wonderful poetry, which, in the words of critic Louis Untermeyer, he “wrote in almost every manner, good and bad, in every meter, old and new, mixing novelty and banality, dropping heavy cacophonies into the lightest melodies, balancing the profound with the trivial, the cosmic with the comic.” We’ll visit him again. But for now, here is his great old standard Christmas poem. Enjoy!