Thomas Hardy

“ Less distinguished than the Jersey, military, naval or London Hardys were those scions of the original John Le Hardy who elected to remain in the neighborhood of the Frome Valley. They preferred the simple delights of a quiet, secure existence in the well-wooded, lush countryside, to tumult, the chatter of guns, intrigue and overweening honors. Such a one was the Thomas Hardy who lived in Melcombe Regis, a small hamlet north of Dorchester and east of Cerne Abbas, towards the end of the Sixteenth Century. ”

“ Eustacia had not been long indoors after her look at the moonlight when a soft footstep came up to the house, and Thomasin was announced by the woman downstairs.
"Ah, Thomasin! Thank you for coming tonight," said Clym when she entered the room. "Here am I, you see. Such a wretched spectacle am I, that I shrink from being seen by a single friend, and almost from you."
"You must not shrink from me, dear Clym," said Thomasin earnestly, in that sweet voice of hers which came to a sufferer like fresh air into a Black Hole. "Nothing in you can ever shock me or drive me away. ”

“ She put on youth in her look and air,
And more was he wonderstruck as he viewed
Her form and flesh bloom yet more fair
While he watched her there;
Till she freshed to the pink and brown
That were hers on the night when first they met,
When she was the charm of the idle town,
And he the pick of the club-fire set. . . .
His eyes grew wet,
And he stretched his arms: "Stay—rest!—"
He cried. “Abide with me so, my own!"
But his arms closed in on his hard bare breast;
She had vanished with all he had looked upon
Of her beauty: gone. ”

“ The door was flung back till it kicked the wall and trembled from top to bottom with the blow. Mr. Oak appeared in the entry with a steaming face, hay-bands wound about his ankles to keep out the snow, a leather strap round his waist outside the smock-frock, and looking altogether an epitome of the world's health and vigour. Four lambs hung in various embarrassing attitudes over his shoulders, and the dog George, whom Gabriel had contrived to fetch from Norcombe, stalked solemnly behind.
"Well, Shepherd Oak, and how's lambing this year, if I mid say it?" inquired Joseph Poorgrass. ”

“ Her lover, who had only looked on at the rat-catching, was promptly at her side.
'What—after all—my insulting slap, too!' said she in an underbreath. She was so utterly exhausted that she had not strength to speak louder.
'I should indeed be foolish to feel offended at anything you say or do,' he answered, in the seductive voice of the Trantridge time. 'How the little limbs tremble! You are as weak as a bled calf, you know you are; and yet you need have done nothing since I arrived. How could you be so obstinate? ”

“ Was Mother much disturbed when she came to you, Thomasin?"
"Yes."
"Very much indeed?"
"Yes."
Clym leant his elbow upon the post of the garden gate, and covered his eyes with his hand.
"Don't trouble about it, Clym. They may get to be friends."
He shook his head. "Not two people with inflammable natures like theirs. Well, what must be will be."
"One thing is cheerful in it--the guineas are not lost." ”

“ The Figure against the Sky When the whole Egdon concourse had left the site of the bonfire to its accustomed loneliness, a closely wrapped female figure approached the barrow from that quarter of the heath in which the little fire lay. Had the reddleman been watching he might have recognized her as the woman who had first stood there so singularly, and vanished at the approach of strangers. She ascended to her old position at the top, where the red coals of the perishing fire greeted her like living eyes in the corpse of day. ”

“ There the two indistinct persons leapt together like a pair of dewdrops on a leaf; and then they stood apart, facing each other, the woman looking down.
‘Emmeline, you begged me to come, and here I am, Heaven forgive me!’ said the man hoarsely.
‘You are going to emigrate, Alwyn,’ she said in broken accents. ‘I have heard of it; you sail from Plymouth in three days in the Western Glory?’
‘Yes. I can live in England no longer. Life is as death to me here,’ says he.
‘My life is even worse—worse than death. Death would not have driven me to this extremity. ”

“ Let the Wessex master forsake his countryside, or leave his peasants for gentlefolk, and immediately my interest wanes, his wonderful appeal fails.
Since I have been here in the bush I have understood, as never before, the great and far-reaching popularity of Thomas Hardy's work among Americans. He gives so much which not all the wealth, nor all the genius of that inventive race, can possibly evolve out of their New World. But, upon the whole, I ought not to have brought my fine, tall rank of Hardy's here, still less to have pored over them as I have. ”

“ At that moment hasty steps were heard in the entry, and the door opened to admit the figure of Gabriel Oak, followed by the maid of the inn bearing a candle. He stared sternly at the one lengthy and two round faces of the sitters, which confronted him with the expressions of a fiddle and a couple of warming-pans. Joseph Poorgrass blinked, and shrank several inches into the background.
"Upon my soul, I'm ashamed of you; 'tis disgraceful, Joseph, disgraceful!" said Gabriel, indignantly. "Coggan, you call yourself a man, and don't know better than this." ”

“ You would, of course, have to excuse yourself from playing that night, and to say that somebody--a cousin of Miss Vye's--would act for you. The other mummers have never spoken to me in their lives so that it would be safe enough; and if it were not, I should not mind. Now, what must I give you to agree to this? Half a crown?"
The youth shook his head
"Five shillings?"
He shook his head again. "Money won't do it," he said, brushing the iron head of the firedog with the hollow of his hand.
"What will, then, Charley?" said Eustacia in a disappointed tone. ”

“ At the end of her dream the Countess of Uplandtowers awoke and arose, and then the enactment of former nights was repeated. Her husband remained still and listened. Two strokes sounded from the clock in the pediment without, when, leaving the chamber-door ajar, she passed along the corridor to the other end, where, as usual, she obtained a light. So deep was the silence that he could even from his bed hear her softly blowing the tinder to a glow after striking the steel. She moved on into the boudoir, and he heard, or fancied he heard, the turning of the key in the closet-door. ”

“ Seven times he swore it could not be;
“Poverty’s worse than shame,” he said,
Till all my hope went out of me.
“I’ve packed my traps to sail the main”—
Roughly he spake, alas did he—
“Wessex beholds me not again,
’Tis worse than any jail would be!”
—There was a shepherd whom I knew,
A subtle man, alas for me:
I sought him all the pastures through,
Though better I had ceased to be.
I traced him by his lantern light,
And gave him hint, alas for me,
Of how she found her in the plight
That is so scorned in Christendie.
“Is there an herb . . . ?” I asked. “Or none?” ”

“ Dear Clym, you'll go back again?"
Clym shook his head, and looked at the eclipse.
"If you'll go back again I'll--be something," she said tenderly, putting her head near his breast. "If you'll agree I'll give my promise, without making you wait a minute longer."
"How extraordinary that you and my mother should be of one mind about this!" said Yeobright. "I have vowed not to go back, Eustacia. It is not the place I dislike; it is the occupation."
"But you can go in some other capacity."
"No. Besides, it would interfere with my scheme. Don't press that, Eustacia. Will you marry me?" ”

“ Venn is asking Christian Cantle to sing," he replied, "and Christian is moving about in his chair as if he were much frightened at the question, and his father has struck up a stave instead of him."
"Yes, I can hear the old man's voice," said Clym. "So there's to be no dancing, I suppose. And is Thomasin in the room? I see something moving in front of the candles that resembles her shape, I think."
"Yes. She do seem happy. She is red in the face, and laughing at something Fairway has said to her. O my!" ”

“ Now run as fast as you can--not that way--through the garden here. No other boy in the heath has had such a bonfire as yours."
The boy, who clearly had had too much of a good thing, marched away into the shadows with alacrity. When he was gone Eustacia, leaving her telescope and hourglass by the gate, brushed forward from the wicket towards the angle of the bank, under the fire. ”

“ The wind blew the smoke, and the child's hair, and the corner of his pinafore, all in the same direction; the breeze died, and the pinafore and hair lay still, and the smoke went up straight.
While Eustacia looked on from this distance the boy's form visibly started--he slid down the bank and ran across towards the white gate.
"Well?" said Eustacia.
"A hopfrog have jumped into the pond. Yes, I heard 'en!"
"Then it is going to rain, and you had better go home. You will not be afraid?" She spoke hurriedly, as if her heart had leapt into her throat at the boy's words. ”

“ IT is difficult to think of Thomas Hardy without thinking of a definitely circumscribed portion of the English countryside. And yet, when reading his novels, lyrics and dramas, one cannot help noting how universally they apply to all that is most intense in human life, how vividly they image the tragedy of human existence everywhere on our little grey planet. ”

“ The timber-merchant was much surprised, and fairly agitated; his hand trembled as he laid by his walking-stick. "This takes me unawares," said he, his voice wellnigh breaking down. "I don't mean that there is anything unexpected in a gentleman being attracted by her; but it did not occur to me that it would be you. I always said," continued he, with a lump in his throat, "that my Grace would make a mark at her own level some day. ”

“ He has been to East Egdon to buy a horse."
"Did he wear a light wideawake?"
"Yes."
"Then I saw him at Throope Corner, leading one home," said Venn drily. "A beauty, with a white face and a mane as black as night. He will soon be here, no doubt." Rising and looking for a moment at the pure, sweet face of Thomasin, over which a shadow of sadness had passed since the time when he had last seen her, he ventured to add, "Mr. Wildeve seems to be often away at this time."
"O yes," cried Thomasin in what was intended to be a tone of gaiety. "Husbands will play the truant, you know. ”

“ And looking back we could see the handpost still
In the solitude of the moor.
“It struck her too,” I thought, for as if afraid
She heavily breathed as we trailed;
Till she said, “I did not think how ’twould look in the shade,
When I leant there like one nailed.”
I, lightly: “There’s nothing in it. For you, anyhow!”
—“O I know there is not,” said she . . .
“Yet I wonder . . . If no one is bodily crucified now,
In spirit one may be!” ”

“ As bag after bag was emptied, airy tufts of down and feathers floated about the room in increasing quantity till, through a mishap of Christian's, who shook the contents of one bag outside the tick, the atmosphere of the room became dense with gigantic flakes, which descended upon the workers like a windless snowstorm.
"I never saw such a clumsy chap as you, Christian," said Grandfer Cantle severely. "You might have been the son of a man that's never been outside Blooms-End in his life for all the wit you have. ”

“ Her son and she wait upon the folks."
"I see," said Eustacia.
"'Tis the last strain, I think," said Saint George, with his ear to the panel. "A young man and woman have just swung into this corner, and he's saying to her, 'Ah, the pity; 'tis over for us this time, my own.'"
"Thank God," said the Turkish Knight, stamping, and taking from the wall the conventional lance that each of the mummers carried. Her boots being thinner than those of the young men, the hoar had damped her feet and made them cold. ”

“ The man finished tying up the gash, and the boy said, "I think I'll go home now, master."
"You are rather afraid of me. Do you know what I be?"
The child surveyed his vermilion figure up and down with much misgiving and finally said, "Yes."
"Well, what?"
"The reddleman!" he faltered.
"Yes, that's what I be. Though there's more than one. You little children think there's only one cuckoo, one fox, one giant, one devil, and one reddleman, when there's lots of us all."
"Is there? You won't carry me off in your bags, will ye, master? 'Tis said that the reddleman will sometimes." ”

“ At length he entered the church, passing by the cavernous pitfall with descending steps which stood open outside the wall of the De Stancy aisle. Arrived within he scanned the few idlers of antiquarian tastes who had remained after the service to inspect the monuments; and beside a recumbent effigy—the effigy in alabaster whose features Paula had wiped with her handkerchief when there with Somerset—he beheld the man it had been his business to find. Abner Power went up and touched this person, who was Dare, on the shoulder.
‘Mr. Power—so it is!’ said the youth. ”

“ As one perverse—misrepresenting Good
⁠In graceless mutiny.
Against the horizon's dim-discerned wheel
⁠A form rose, strange of mould:
That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel
⁠Rather than could behold.
"'Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent
⁠To darkness!" croaked the Thing.
"Not if you look aloft!" said I, intent
⁠On my new reasoning.
"Yea—but await awhile!" he cried. "Ho-ho!—
⁠Look now aloft and see!"
I looked. There, too, sat night: Heaven's radiant show
⁠Had gone. Then chuckled he. ”