This slightly-built romance was the outcome of a wish to set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe, and to impart to readers the sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be the greater to them as men.

“But is it—in a human sense, and apart from macrocosmic magnitudes—important?” he inquired…

I really enjoyed this, my first foray into Hardy (chosen on a whim because I couldn't resist the cover). The prose is just gorgeous, easily some of the most beautiful I've read. And the idea of a romance between two star-crossed lovers, one of whom is a dreamy-eyed astronomer with an observatory atop an abandoned stone tower, just works for me (in concept) on every level. (Well, being Viviette's age myself, the age gap did weird me out a bit.) The beginning with the romantic conversations on astronomy and the descriptions of the tower itself was by far and away the best bit.

However, I found this book majorly lacking in character development, and, thus, in emotional impact. Swithin and Viviette are as one-dimensional as they come. This was exemplified in the fact that I still have no idea why they were in love with each other, and so didn't feel especially invested in either them or their relationship. It's really a shame, because if these characters had been more fleshed out, this novel could have easily become a favorite of mine; as it is, I liked it well enough, but it's probably not something I'll be rereading. (I hope this isn't an issue I find in Hardy's other novels—because I do plan to read more.)

Some favorite passages:

The sob of the environing trees was here expressively manifest, and, moved by the light breeze, their thin straight stems rocked in seconds, like inverted pendulums; while some boughs and twigs rubbed the pillar’s sides, or occasionally clicked in catching each other… Below the level of their summits the masonry was lichen-stained and mildewed, for the sun never pierced that moaning cloud of blue-black vegetation: pads of moss grew in the joints of the stonework, and here and there shade-loving insects had engraved on the mortar patterns of no human style or meaning, but curious and suggestive.

…till he asked her how many stars she thought were visible to them at that moment. She looked around over the magnificent stretch of sky that their high position unfolded. “Oh—thousands—hundreds of thousands,” she said absently. “No. There are only about three thousand. Now how many do you think are brought within sight by the help of a powerful telescope?” “I won’t guess.” “Twenty millions. So that, whatever the stars were made for, they were not made to please our eyes. It is just the same in everything: nothing is made for man.”

“I think astronomy is a bad study for you. It makes you feel human insignificance too plainly.”

“The imaginary picture of the sky as the concavity of a dome whose base extends from horizon to horizon of our earth is grand, simply grand, and I wish I had never got beyond looking at it in that way. But the actual sky is a horror.”

“There is a size at which dignity begins,” he exclaimed: “further on there is a size at which grandeur begins; further on there is a size at which solemnity begins, further on a size at which awfulness begins, further on a size at which ghastliness begins. That size faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe. So am I not right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers to bury themselves in the depths of that universe merely strain their faculties to gain a new horror?”

For all the wonder of these everlasting stars, eternal spheres, and what not, they are not everlasting, they are not eternal; they burn out like candles.

“Then if, on the other hand, you are restless and anxious about the future, study astronomy at once. Your troubles will be reduced amazingly. But your study will reduce them in a singular way—by reducing the importance of everything…”

Then again the scintillations vary. No star flaps his wings like Sirius when he lies low! He flashes out emeralds, and rubies—amethystine flames and sapphirine colours in a manner quite marvellous to behold. And this is only one star! So, too, do Arcturus, and Capella, and lesser luminaries…

They plunged down to that (at other times) invisible multitude in the back rows of the celestial theatre—remote layers of constellations whose shapes were new and singular—pretty twinklers which for infinite ages had spent their beams without calling forth from a single earthly poet a single line, or being able to bestow a ray of comfort on a single benighted traveller.

The eight unwatered dying plants in the row of eight flowerpots denoted that there was something wrong in the house.

The simple fact is that the vastness of the field of astronomy reduces every terrestrial thing to atomic dimensions.

She in her experience had sought out him in his inexperience, and had led him like a child.

It was an evening of exceptional irradiations, and the west heaven gleamed like a foundry of all metals common and rare; the clouds were broken into a thousand fragments, and the margin of every fragment shone.

…the thrushes cracking snails on the garden stones outside, with the noisiness of little smiths at work on little anvils.

“…I have physical reasons for being any man’s wife,” she said recklessly.

To altered circumstances inevitably followed altered views.