Chapter XVIII, Englebourn village …The figure of fun was a middle-aged man of small stature, and very bandy-legged, dressed in a blue coat and brass buttons, and carrying a great […]
From Tom Brown at Oxford by Thomas Hughes, pub.1861 Read More »
POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY (with West Gallery Connections) Another experience of the Mellstock Quire We went our Christmas rounds once more,With quire and viols as theretofore. Our path was near
THE PAPHIAN BALL by Thomas Hardy Read More »
POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY (with West Gallery Connections) (Circa 1850) On afternoons of drowsy calmWe stood in the panelled pew,Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalmTo the tune of ‘Cambridge New’.We watched
AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK by Thomas Hardy Read More »
POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY (with West Gallery Connections) Does he want you down there In the Nether GloomsThe hours may be a dragging load upon him, As he hears the axle grind Round
TO MY FATHER’S VIOLIN by Thomas Hardy Read More »
POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY (with West Gallery Connections) He often would ask usThat, when he died,After playing so manyTo their last rest,If out of us anyShould here abide,And it would
THE CHOIRMASTER’S BURIAL by Thomas Hardy Read More »
POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY (with West Gallery Connections) (Mellstock: circa 1835) She turned in the high pew, until her sightSwept the west gallery, and caught its rowOf music-men with viol,
A CHURCH ROMANCE by Thomas Hardy Read More »
Some of these compositions which now lie before me, with their repetition of lines, half-lines, and half-words, their fugues and their intermediate symphonies, are good singing still, though they would
From UNDER THE GREEN WOOD TREE by Thomas HARDY Read More »
The parson announced Psalm fifty-third to the tune ‘Devizes’, and his voice burst forth with; ‘The Lord look’d down from Heav’n’s high towerThe sons of men to view’, in notes
From TWO ON A TOWER by Thomas Hardy Read More »
Whenever a club walked he’d play the clarinet in the band that marched before ’em as if he’d never touched anything but a clarinet all his life. And then, when
From THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE by Thomas Hardy Read More »
Now the Three Mariners was the inn chosen by Henchard as the place for closing his long term of dramless years. He had so timed his entry as to be
From THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE by Thomas Hardy Read More »
The quiet time of evening, the secluded neighbourhood, the unusually gorgeous liveries of the clouds packed in a pile over that quarter of the heavens in which the sun had
From THE LAODICIAN by Thomas Hardy Read More »
Old Andrey’s Experience as a Musician ‘I was one of the choir-boys at that time, and we and the players were to appear at the manor-house as usual that Christmas
From A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS by Thomas Hardy Read More »
Absent-mindedness in a Parish Church It happened on Sunday after Christmas – the last Sunday they played in Longpuddle church gallery, as it turned out, thought they didn’t know it
From A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS by Thomas Hardy Read More »
Chapter One – The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton. (The mythical village of Shepperton is thought to be Chilvers Coton, in Warwickshire, where George Eliot grew up.) And
From SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE by George Eliot Read More »
They shamble in one after another, with steaming breath, for it is winter, and loud clattering of hobnailed boots; they beat the snow from off them as they enter, and
From THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler. Read More »