Monday, October 28, 2013

Books I'm Surprised Don't Exist #6 and #7

The Bum on the Seat: Recollections of an Avid Movie Goer.

Hoping it Might Be So: An Anthology of Literary Agnosticism.


For those who don't know, the latter is an allusion to Thomas Hardy's haunting poem, The Oxen, which I reproduce below. There have been a couple of books with that title, but neither was an anthology of literary agnosticism (which would, naturally, be an anthology of poems, stories and essays with the general theme of agnosticism.)

The Oxen by Thomas Hardy

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.

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