Far From the Madding Crowd | Page 5

the
grass. A group or two of the latest in date amongst the dead multitude
had remained till this very mid-winter time on the twigs which bore
them and in falling rattled against the trunks with smart taps.
Between this half-wooded half naked hill, and the vague still horizon
that its summit indistinctly commanded, was a mysterious sheet of
fathomless shade -- the sounds from which suggested that what it
concealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here. The thin
grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in
breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures -- one
rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another
brushing them like a soft broom. The instinctive act of humankind was
to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on
the left wailed or chaunted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a
cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught
the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob; and how the hurrying gust

then plunged into the south, to be heard no more.
The sky was clear -- remarkably clear -- and the twinkling of all the
stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.
The North Star was directly in the wind's eye, and since evening the
Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a
right angle with the meridian. A difference of colour in the stars --
oftener read of than seen in England -- was really perceptible here. 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. The
sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past
earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by
the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by
the solitude; but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along
is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and
to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a
hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense
of difference from the mass of civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt
and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly
watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal
reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the
consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human
frame.
Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this
place up against the sky. They had a clearness which was to be found
nowhere in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in
nature. They were the notes of Farmer Oak's flute.
The tune was not floating unhindered into the open air: it seemed
muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to
spread high or wide. It came from the direction of a small dark object
under the plantation hedge -- a shepherd's hut -- now presenting an
outline to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled to

attach either meaning or use.
The image as a whole was that of a small Noah's Ark on a small Ararat,
allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of the Ark which
are followed by toy-makers -- and by these means are established in
men's imaginations among their firmest, because earliest impressions --
to pass as an approximate pattern. The hut stood on little wheels, which
raised its floor about a foot from the ground. Such shepherds' huts are
dragged into the fields when the lambing season comes on, to shelter
the shepherd in his enforced nightly attendance.
It was only latterly that people had begun to call Gabriel "Farmer" Oak.
During the twelvemonth preceding this time he had been enabled by
sustained efforts of industry and chronic good spirits to lease the small
sheep-farm of which Norcombe Hill was a portion, and stock it with
two hundred sheep. Previously he had been a bailiff for a short time,
and earlier still a shepherd only, having from his childhood assisted his
father in tending the flocks of large proprietors, till old Gabriel sank to
rest.
This venture, unaided and alone, into the paths of farming as master
and not as man, with an advance of sheep not yet paid for, was a critical