It was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing anygreat sense of incongruity:when,with impressible persons,love becomes
solicitousness,hope sinks to misgiving,and faith to hope:when the exercise ofmemory does not stir feelings of regret at opportunities for ambition that havebeen passed by,and anticipation does not prompt to enterprise. (查看原文)
This climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid moor,and for the first time in the season its irregularities were forms without features;suggestive of anything,proclaiming nothing and without more character thanthat of being the limit of something else-the lowest layer of a firmament of
snow.From this chaotic skyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor
momentarily received additional clothing only to appear momentarily more naked thereby.The vast arch of cloud above was strangely low,and formed as it were the roof of a large dark cavern,gradually sinking in upon its floor;for theinstinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and that encrusting theearth would soon unite into one mass without any intervening stratum of air at all. (查看原文)
Yet Farmer Boldwood, whether by nature kind, or the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness here. The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all. (查看原文)
It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; whth totally different aims the method is the same on both sides. (查看原文)
Norcombe Hill - not far from lonely Toller-Down - was one of the spots which suggest to a passer-by that he is in the presence of a shape approaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on earth. It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil - an ordinary specimen of those smoothly outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down. (查看原文)
The hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying plantation of beeches, whose upper verge formed a line over the crest, fringing its arched curve against the sky, like a mane. Tonight these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest blasts, which smote the wood and floundered through it with a sound as of grumbling, or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened moan. The dry leaves in the ditch simmered and boiled
in the same breezes, a tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few, and sending them spinning across the grass. A group or two of the latest in date amongst the dead multitude had remained till this very mid winter time on the twigs which bore them, and in falling rattled against the trunks with smart taps. (查看原文)
Between this half wooded half naked hill, and the vague still horizon that its summit indistinctly commanded, was a mysterious
sheet or fathomless shade - the sounds from which suggested that what it concealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here. The thin grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures - one rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another brushing them like a soft broom. The instinctive act of human-kind was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or chaunted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob... (查看原文)
The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse . The North Star was directly in the wind's eye, and since evening the Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. A difference of colour in the stars - oftener read of than seen in England - was really perceptible here. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eve with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red. (查看原文)
To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable
movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the might. and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your s... (查看原文)
His dog waited for his meals in a way so like in which Oak waited for the girl’s presence that the farmer was quite struck with the resemblance. (查看原文)
Reminiscence is less an endowment than a disease and that expectation in its own comfortable form - that of absolute faith - is practically an impossibility; Whilst in the form of hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve curiosity it is in constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain. (查看原文)
The wondrous power of flattery in passados at women is a perception so universal asked to be remarked upon by many people almost as automatically as they repeat a proverb or say that they are Christian and like without thinking much of the enormous corollaries which spring from the proposition. (查看原文)
The hill opposite Bathsheba's dwelling extended, a mile off, into anuncultivated tract of land, dotted at this season with tall thickets of brake fern, plump and diaphanous from recent rapid growth, and radiant in hues of clear and untainted green. (查看原文)
