The Uncultivated Garden (excerpt from "Tess of the d'Urbervilles")
The outskirt of the garden in which Tess found herself had been left uncultivated for some years, and was now damp and rank with juicy grass which sent up
mists of pollen at a touch; and with tall blooming weeds emitting offensive smells -- weeds
whose red and yellow and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as
that of cultivated flowers. She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth,
gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, staining her hands
with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which,
though snow-white on the apple-tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin; thus she drew quite near
to Clare, still unobserved of him. Tess was conscious of neither time nor
space. The exaltation which she had described as being producible at will by gazing at a star
came now without any determination of hers; she undulated upon the thin notes of the second-hand
harp, and their harmonies passed like breezes through her, bringing tears into her eyes. The floating
pollen seemed to be his notes made visible, and the dampness of the garden the weeping of
the garden's sensibility. Though near nightfall, the rank-smelling weedflowers glowed as if they
would not close for intentness, and the waves of colour mixed with the waves of sound. The light
which still shone was derived mainly from a large hole in the western bank of cloud; it was like
a piece of day left behind by accident, dusk having closed in elsewhere.
