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This setting originally appeared on 'Christmas at the Desert Moon Hotel'. In this poem Thomas Hardy recalls an old local legend of how, on Christmas Eve, the animals in a stable will kneel at midnight, mysteriously remembering the birth of the Saviour.

lyrics

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.

credits

from Neutral Tones : Song Settings of the Poetry of Thomas Hardy, released February 9, 2020
Gordon Thompson - vocal | Mark Hughes - piano | Lauren Bell - flute.

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Gordon Thompson Melbourne, Australia

Gordon lives in Melbourne and is the publisher at Clouds of Magellan Press, and publisher of 'Bent Street: Australian LGBTIQA+ Arts, Writing & Ideas'. He has four children (at last count) with Petrina, also one dog (Shep) and 6 goldfish (Papa Jo and the Sylvesters) ... more

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