First Known When Lost: Christmas, Part Five: "I Should Go With Him In The Gloom, Hoping It Might Be So"

First Known When Lost: Christmas, Part Five: "I Should Go With Him In The Gloom, Hoping It Might Be So"
Excerpt:
'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   Thomas Hardy, Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917)