Under the Greenwood Tree, or, the Mellstock quire; a rural painting of the Dutch school by Thomas Hardy
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page 4 of 234 (01%)
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April 1912.
PART THE FIRST--WINTER CHAPTER I: MELLSTOCK-LANE 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. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality. On a cold and starry Christmas-eve within living memory a man was passing up a lane towards Mellstock Cross in the darkness of a plantation that whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence. All the evidences of his nature were those afforded by the spirit of his footsteps, which succeeded each other lightly and quickly, and by the liveliness of his voice as he sang in a rural cadence: "With the rose and the lily And the daffodowndilly, The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go." The lonely lane he was following connected one of the hamlets of |
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