Far from the Madding Crowd help. Afterwards, she offers him back his job and their friendship is restored. At this point, the dashing Sergeant Francis "Frank" Troy returns to his native Weatherbury and by chance encounters Bathsheba one night. Her initial dislike turns to infatuation after he excites her with a private display of swordsmanship. Gabriel observes Bathsheba's interest in the young soldier and tries to discourage it, telling her she would be better off marrying Boldwood. Boldwood becomes aggressive towards Troy, and Bathsheba goes to Bath to prevent Troy returning to Weatherbury, as she fears Troy may be harmed on meeting Boldwood. On their
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard his deceased friend, echoing Gray's narrator reading the tombstones to connect to the dead. Robert Browning relied on a similar setting to the Elegy in his pastoral poem "Love Among the Ruins", which describes the desire for glory and how everything ends in death. Unlike Gray, Browning adds a female figure and argues that nothing but love matters. Thomas Hardy, who had memorised Gray's poem, took the title of his fourth novel, Far from the Madding Crowd, from a line in it. In addition, many in his "Wessex Poems and Other Verses" (1898) contain a graveyard theme and take a