he Oxen_:--

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 some one 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.

The mood of faith, however--or, rather, of delight in the memory of
faith--is not Mr. Hardy's prevailing mood. At the same time, his unfaith
relates to the duration of love rather than to human destiny. He
believes in "the world's amendment." He can enter upon a war without
ironical doubts, as we see in the song _Men who March Away_. More than
this, he can look forward beyond war to the coming of a new patriotism
of the world. "How long," he cries, in a poem written some years ago:--

How long, O ruling Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels,
Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,
That are as puppets in a playing hand?
When shall the saner softer polities
Whereof we dream, have sway in each proud land,
And Patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand
Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?

But, perhaps, his characteristic attitude to war is to be found, not in
lines like these, but in that melancholy poem, _The Souls of the Slain_,
in which the souls of the dead soldiers return to their country and
question a "senior soul-flame" as to how their friends and relatives
have kept their doughty deeds in remembrance:--

"And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,
Sworn loyal as doves?"
"Many mourn; many think
It is not unattractive to prink
Them in sable for heroes. Some fickle and fleet hearts
Have found them new loves."

"And our wives?" quoth another, resignedly,
"Dwell they on our deeds?"
"Deeds of home; that live yet
Fresh as new--deeds of fondness or fret,
Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly,
These, these have their heeds."

Mr. Hardy has too bitter a sense of reality to believe much in the glory
of war. His imagination has always been curiously intereste