23 Thomas Hardy Quotes on Nature

Thomas Hardy quotes on nature

2. When I set out for Lyonnesse, A hundred miles away, The rime was on the spray, And starlight lit my lonesomeness.

5. To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall.

10. You calculated how to be uncalculating, and are natural by art!

12. William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough, Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's, And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!

13. They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined - just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound. Young Hodge the Drummer never knew - Fresh from his Wessex home - The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam. Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge forever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally.

16. I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.

17. An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

19. Here by the baring bough Raking up leaves, Often I ponder how Springtime deceives,- I, an old woman now, Raking up leaves.

22. In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

23. And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. Alien they seemed to be; No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history, Or sign that they were bent By paths coincident On being anon twin halves of one august event, Till the Spinner of the Years Said 'Now!' And each one hears, And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

28. Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk. Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass; Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass. Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by: War's annals will cloud into night Ere their story die.

30. Ah, no; the years, the years; Down their carved names the raindrop plows.

32. This is the weather the shepherd shuns, And so do I.

33. And meadow rivulets overflow, And drops on gate bars hang in a row, And rooks in families homeward go, And so do I.

34. A star looks down at me, And says: 'Here I and you Stand each in our degree: What do you mean to do,- Mean to do?'

38. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red. 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.

42. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.

43. In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale.

44. The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen.

45. The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained.

46. Above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere than on a celestial globe.

53. All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands.

70. Ere systemed suns were globed and lit The slaughters of the race were writ.