Out of Time? Can't Find a Copy?

 

This month our selection is Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. As Hardy books go, this one is fairly cheerful. If you don't have time to hunt down a copy, try reading it online here , at "Online Literature."  Or trying listening to a very nice, gentle reading of it on Librivox, here.

Meanwhile, here is, in part, the poem from which the title was taken:

Elegy Written in a Church Courtyard
Thomas Gray,  1751

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.