midday
Strangely would they billow in the wind sometimes , like sea-waves , frozen and enchanted flat , seeking to rise and wallow in the wind with conscious depth and whelming mass . But generally they lay supine , saturated with light and its cleansing power . Falconer 's jubilation in the white and green of a little boat , as we lay , one bright morning , on the banks of the Thames between Richmond and Twickenham , led to such a description of the bleachfield that I can write about it as if I had known it myself . One Saturday afternoon in the end of July , when the westering sun was hotter than at midday , he went down to the lower end of the field , where the river was confined by a dam , and plunged from the bank into deep water . After a swim of half-an-hour , he ascended the higher part of the field , and lay down upon a broad web to bask in the sun . In his ears was the hush rather than rush of the water over the dam , the occasional murmur of a belt of trees that skirted the border of the field , and the dull continuous sound of the beatles at their work below , like a persistent growl of thunder on the horizon . Had Robert possessed a copy of Robinson Crusoe , or had his grandmother not cast The Lady of the Lake , mistaking it for an idol , if not to the moles and the bats , yet to the mice and the black-beetles , he might have been lying reading it , blind and deaf to the face and the voice of Nature , and years might have passed before a response awoke in his heart .