"It was now early spring--"

I just finished reading Far From the Madding Crowd this weekend and absolutely loved it. Apart from all the wonderful ways in which Gabriel Oak embodies Christ as the Good Shepherd of the story--which I could write on and on about so will save for another post--Hardy's command of language was remarkable.

This particular passage has really stuck with me all week:

"It was now early spring--the time of going to grass with the sheep, when they have the first feed of the meadows, before these are laid up for mowing. The wind, which had been blowing east for several weeks, had veered to the southward, and the middle of spring had come abruptly--almost without a beginning. It was that period in the vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be walking for the season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts" (Hardy 95).

Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd. 1874. Ware: Wordsworth, 1993.