midday
You have emerged from the country of ravines into the broad valley of the Bialka , and the bright sun shines full into your eyes . If the earth is a table on which Providence has spread a banquet for creation , then the valley of the Bialka is a gigantic , long-shaped dish with upturned rim . In the winter this dish is white , but at other seasons it is like majolica , with forms severe and irregular , but beautiful . The Divine Potter has placed a field at the bottom of the dish and cut it through from north to south with the ribbon of the Bialka sparkling with waves of sapphire blue in the morning , crimson in the evening , golden at midday , and silver in moonlit nights . When He had formed the bottom , the Great Potter shaped the rim , taking care that each side should possess an individual physiognomy . The west bank is wild ; the field touches the steep gravel hills , where a few scattered hawthorn bushes and dwarf birches grow . Patches of earth show here and there , as though the turf had been peeled .