The Man He Killed / Thomas Hardy

Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have set us down to wet

Right many a nipperkin! 

But ranged as infantry,

And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

And killed him in his place. 

Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave? / Thomas Hardy

"Ah, are you digging on my grave,

My loved one? -- planting rue?"

-- "No: yesterday he went to wed

One of the brightest wealth has bred.

'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,

'That I should not be true.'" 

"Then who is digging on my grave,

My nearest dearest kin?"

-- "Ah, no: they sit and think, 'What use!

What good will planting flowers produce?

No tendance of her mound can loose

Her spirit from Death's gin.'" 

The Distracted Preacher / Thomas Hardy

CHAPTER I--HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED

Something delayed the arrival of the Wesleyan minister, and a young man came temporarily in his stead. It was on the thirteenth of January 183- that Mr. Stockdale, the young man in question, made his humble entry into the village, unknown, and almost unseen. But when those of the inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection became acquainted with him, they were rather pleased with the substitute than otherwise, though he had scarcely as yet acquired ballast of character sufficient to steady the consciences of the hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure blood who, at this time, lived in Nether-Moynton, and to give in addition supplementary support to the mixed race which went to church in the morning and chapel in the evening, or when there was a tea--as many as a hundred-and-ten people more, all told, and including the parish-clerk in the winter-time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe who passed up the street at seven o'clock--which, to be just to him, he was never anxious to do.

Interlopers at the Knap / Thomas Hardy

CHAPTER I

The north road from Casterbridge is tedious and lonely, especially in winter-time. Along a part of its course it connects with Long-Ash Lane, a monotonous track without a village or hamlet for many miles, and with very seldom a turning. Unapprized wayfarers who are too old, or too young, or in other respects too weak for the distance to be traversed, but who, nevertheless, have to walk it, say, as they look wistfully ahead, 'Once at the top of that hill, and I must surely see the end of Long-Ash Lane!' But they reach the hilltop, and Long-Ash Lane stretches in front as mercilessly as before.

Fellow Townsmen / Thomas Hardy

CHAPTER I

The shepherd on the east hill could shout out lambing intelligence to the shepherd on the west hill, over the intervening town chimneys, without great inconvenience to his voice, so nearly did the steep pastures encroach upon the burghers' backyards. And at night it was possible to stand in the very midst of the town and hear from their native paddocks on the lower levels of greensward the mild lowing of the farmer's heifers, and the profound, warm blowings of breath in which those creatures indulge. But the community which had jammed itself in the valley thus flanked formed a veritable town, with a real mayor and corporation, and a staple manufacture.

An Imaginative Woman / Thomas Hardy

When William Marchmill had finished his inquiries for lodgings at a well- known watering-place in Upper Wessex, he returned to the hotel to find his wife. She, with the children, had rambled along the shore, and

Marchmill followed in the direction indicated by the military-looking hall-porter.

'By Jove, how far you've gone! I am quite out of breath,' Marchmill said, rather impatiently, when he came up with his wife, who was reading as she walked, the three children being considerably further ahead with the nurse.

A Mere Interlude / Thomas Hardy

I

The traveller in school-books, who vouched in dryest tones for the fidelity to fact of the following narrative, used to add a ring of truth to it by opening with a nicety of criticism on the heroine's personality. People were wrong, he declared, when they surmised that Baptista Trewthen was a young woman with scarcely emotions or character. There was nothing in her to love, and nothing to hate--so ran the general opinion. That she showed few positive qualities was true. The colours and tones which changing events paint on the faces of active womankind were looked for in vain upon hers. But still waters run deep; and no crisis had come in the years of her early maidenhood to demonstrate what lay hidden within her, like metal in a mine.

The Three Strangers / Thomas Hardy

Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an

appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be

reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases,

as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain

counties in the south and southwest. If any mark of human occupation

is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage

of some shepherd.

The Withered Arm / Thomas Hardy

I 

A Lorn Milkmaid

It was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular and supernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as yet but early April, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the cows were 'in full pail'. The hour was about six in the evening, and three-fourths of the large, red, rectangular animals having been finished off, there was opportunity for a little conversation. 

'He do bring home his bride tomorrow, I hear. They've come as far as Anglebury today.' 

Squire Petricks Lady / Thomas Hardy

Folk who are at all acquainted with the traditions of Stapleford Park will not need to be told that in the middle of the last century it was owned by that trump of mortgagees, Timothy Petrick, whose skill in gaining possession of fair estates by granting sums of money on their title-deeds has seldom if ever been equaled in our part of England. Timothy was a lawyer by profession, and agent to several noblemen, by which means his special line of business became opened to him by a sort of revelation. It is said that a relative of his, a very deep thinker, who afterwards had the misfortune to be transported for life for mistaken notions on the singing of a will, taught him considerable legal lore, which he creditably resolved never to throw away for the benefit of other people, but to reserve it entirely for his own.