The Oxen (Jennifer Bastable)

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• (Posted 2025-11-20)  CPDL #87488:       

Editor: Jennifer Bastable (submitted 2025-11-20).   Score information: Letter, 6 pages, 378 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: The Oxen
Composer: Jennifer Bastable
Lyricist: Thomas Hardy
Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Carol

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published:
Description: A setting for four voices of Thomas Hardy's famous poem.

Original text and translations

English text

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.