" Few lovers of Wessex can keep the thought of Hardy and his far-swooping hawk's eye out of their minds when they see the shafts of a deserted plough protruding from a bare hill-top, or the outline of a solitary human form silhouetted against a pale sky, or a horse and wagon following the dwindling perspective of some distant white road.   Yes, he saw most things - from a tuft of wind-swept grass to the swinging tail of a stalled ox, from the crumpled wrinkles of a bedridden woman's cheek to the crater-ridges in the voyaging moon, from the grinning skull of a dead rabbit to the quivering snout of a living hedgehog - under what might be called their lineal absoluteness, the imprint that they make, ere the universal flux carries them away, upon the camera obscura of the Timeless."

The Pleasures of Literature, John Cowper Powys

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