Sentence No. 15 · 11 April 2026
The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night.
Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy — Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
Notice the pivot at "and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary": the conjunction "and" links two independent clauses, and the second uses a dummy subject "it" with a postponed infinitive. Whenever you see "it is necessary to," the infinitive phrase follows — it never leads.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 8 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A shepherd gazes at the night sky from a hilltop and feels the weight of deep time. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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