morning, midday
`` Beautiful it was to sit there , as in my skyey Tent , musing and meditating ; on the high table-land , in front of the Mountains ; over me , as roof , the azure Dome , and around me , for walls , four azure-flowing curtains , -- namely , of the Four azure Winds , on whose bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding . And then to fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these Mountain hollows ; with their green flower-lawns , and white dames and damosels , lovely enough : or better still , the straw-roofed Cottages , wherein stood many a Mother baking bread , with her children round her : -- all hidden and protectingly folded up in the valley-folds ; yet there and alive , as sure as if I beheld them . Or to see , as well as fancy , the nine Towns and Villages , that lay round my mountain-seat , which , in still weather , were wont to speak to me -LRB- by their steeple-bells -RRB- with metal tongue ; and , in almost all weather , proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds ; whereon , as on a culinary horologe , I might read the hour of the day . For it was the smoke of cookery , as kind housewives at morning , midday , eventide , were boiling their husbands ' kettles ; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air , successively or simultaneously , from each of the nine , saying , as plainly as smoke could say : Such and such a meal is getting ready here . Not uninteresting ! For you have the whole Borough , with all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries , contentions and contentments , as in miniature , and could cover it all with your hat . -- If , in my wide Way-farings , I had learned to look into the business of the World in its details , here perhaps was the place for combining it into general propositions , and deducing inferences therefrom .