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On the morning appointed for her departure Tess was awake before dawn - at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken.
T. Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Vol.1, Wessex Edition, MacMillan, London, 1920, p. 56, chap. 7.
PLACE: West Country, England
TIME: ca. 1870-80
The soundlessness impressed her as a positive entity rather than as the mere negation of noise. It was broken by the strumming of strings. Tess had heard those notes in the attic above her head. Dim, flattened, constrained by their confinement, they had never appealed to her as now, when they wandered in the still air with a stark quality like that of nudity. To speak absolutely, both instrument and execution were poor; but the relative is all, and as she listened Tess, like a fascinated bird, could not leave the spot.
T. Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Vol. 1, Wessex Edition, Macmillan, London, 1920, p. 157-158, chap. 19.
PLACE: West Country, England
TIME: ca. 1870-80
Tess was conscious of neither time nor space. The exaltation which she had described as being producible at will by gazing at a star, came now without any determination of hers; she undulated upon the thin notes of the second-hand harp, and their harmonies passed like breezes through her, bringing tears into her eyes. The floating pollen seemed to be his notes made visible, and the dampness of the garden the weeping of the garden's sensibility. Though near nightfall, the ranksmelling weed-flowers glowed as if they would not close for intentness, and the waves of colour mixed with the waves of sound.
T. Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Vol. 1, Wessex Edition, Macmillan, London, 1920, p. 158.
PLACE: West Country, England
TIME: ca. 1870-80
A hasty lunch was eaten as they stood, without leaving their positions, and then another couple of hours brought them near to dinner-time; the inexorable wheels continuing to spin, and the penetrating hum of the thresher to thrill to the very marrow all who were near the revolving wire cage.
T. Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Vol. l. Wessex Edition, Macmillan, London, 1920, p. 416, chap. 37.
PLACE: West Country, England
TIME: ca. 1870-80
CIRCUMSTANCES: Stationary (steam?) engine to which the grain is brought.
Presently there arose from within a ticking like the love-making of the grasshopper. The machine had begun, and a moving concatenation of three horses and the aforesaid long rickety machine was visible over the gate, a driver sitting upon one of the hauling horses, and an attendant on the seat of the implement.
T. Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Vol.1, Wessex Edition, Macmillan, London, 1920, p.110, chap. 14.
PLACE: West Country, England
TIME: ca. 1870-80
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