Look closely and you can also see photos of older sibs
Peg (10th grade) & Dave (Vietnam) on mantelpiece.
And, one on each end:
two big gallon jars of "hard rock candy Christmas."
This was in our house at
704 Baxter Street Road ~ Neosho, Missouri
With me as Bath Towel Madonna,
my younger sister Diane as the Angel ~
and her doll Floppy as Baby Jesus;
my twin brother Bruce as Joseph;
my younger brother Aaron as Shepherd ~
and Big Doggy as sheep.
[Don't ask me why, but we had a way back then of describing our toys
rather than actually naming them, as with my Boy Doll;
and Aaron's Tractor - Boy and Blue - Eyed Bear.]
The 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 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.
Yuletide in a Younger World
We believed in highdays then,
And could glimpse at night
On Christmas Eve
Imminent oncomings of radiant revel—
Doings of delight:—
Now we have no such sight.
We had eyes for phantoms then,
And at bridge or stile
On Christmas Eve
Clear beheld those countless ones who had crossed it
Cross again in file:—
Such has ceased longwhile!
We liked divination then,
And, as they homeward wound
On Christmas Eve,
We could read men's dreams within them spinning
Even as wheels spin round:—
Now we are blinker-bound.
We heard still small voices then,
And, in the dim serene
Of Christmas Eve,
Caught the far-time tones of fire-filled prophets
Long on earth unseen:—
Can such ever have been?
both poems by Thomas Hardy, 1840 - 1928
English novelist, poet, and Victorian realist
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