Tess of the D'Urbervilles

by Thomas Hardy

It was a hazy sunrise in August. The denser nocturnal vapours, attacked by the warm beams, were dividing and shrinking into isolated fleeces within hollows and coverts, where they waited till they should be dried away to nothing.

                The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding the mas­culine pronoun for its adequate expression. His present aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms in the scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment. One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that was brimming with interest for him.

                His light, a little later, broke through chinks of cottage shutters, throwing stripes like red-hot pokers upon cupboards, chests of drawers, and other furniture within; and awakening harvesters who were not already astir.

                But of all ruddy things that morning the brightest were two broad arms of painted wood, which rose from the margin of a yellow cornfield hard by Marlott village. They, with two others below, formed the revolving Maltese cross of the reaping-machine, which had been brought to the field on the previous evening to be ready for operations this day. The paint with which they were smeared, intensified in hue by the sunlight, imparted to them a look of having been dipped in liq­uid fire.

                The field had already been “opened”; that is to say, a lane a few feet wide had been hand-cut through the wheat along the whole circumference of the field, for the first passage of the horses and machine. /.../

                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. Along one side of the field the whole wain went, the arms of the me­chanical reaper revolving slowly, till it passed down the hill quite out of sight. In a minute it came up on the other side of the field at the same equable pace; the glistening brass star in the fore­head of the fore horse first catching the eyes as it rose into view over the stubble, then the bright arms, and then the whole machine.

Notes and exercises:

1.     The suffix “–our” occurs in nouns which are French borrowings:

vapour	honour	rumour	valour	glamour	fervour	splendour
vigour	timour	rigour	odour	clamour	candour	demeanour
favour	humour	parlour	armour	ardour	rancour	flavour

NB!        Note that in American English this suffix is spelt as “–or”, e.g. color, labor, humor, etc.

2.     The sound [k] is rendered by “q” in the following words:

adequate	equable	technique	unique	bouquet	require
liquid	critique	antique	physique	quay	inquire

3.       Long [u:] is rendered by the digraph “ou” mainly in words of French origin:

group, soup, route, routine, barouche, rouge, acoustics; you, youth, wound, through, ghoul, brougham.

4.     Give derivatives of the following words:

Verb       Noun      Adjective              Adverb

concentrate          concentration      concentrated        ...

organize                ...             ...             ...

hate        ...             ...             ...

base       ...             ...             ...

require   ...             ...             ...

repeat    ...             ...             ...

5.     Word study:

sentient                      [´senò¶nt] having feeling, able to have feeling, experiencing sensation

heliolatry                 sun-worship

luminary                  a source of light; (here) the sun

Maltese cross           [mo:l´ti:z] the badge of the Knights of Malta, a cross with two pointed expanding broad limbs

wain                           a team and implements used in cultivation of land, a wagon for hay or other agricultural produce

6.     Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

strips like red-hot pokers, he felt like a fool, it was raining and blowing like the end of the world, in their company he felt like a fish out of water, he smokes like a chimney, he drinks like a fish, they were packed in the car like herrings in a tin, he was off like a shot, like I said... (US), the news spread like wildfire, to follow like a shadow