Monday, January 23, 2012

sly and unseen

Came across this 'challenging sight' in the crypt of St Martin in the Fields (off Trafalgar Sq) a few years ago - it came back to me when reading 'One Day' recently (see below).
'She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year... her own birthday; and every other day individualised by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those, that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it, but no less the surely there. When was it?'

(Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles - quoted in One Day, David Nicholls)

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