noon
It was not the austere cry of the curlew who dwells on moors when they are unvisitable by men . This was the voice of some bird appropriate to the place . It was unhurried . Whatever lived on the plain saw when the sun rose on its edge shadows as long as living things ever see them , and watched them shrink till noon , and lengthen out again till sundown ; and time must have seemed the slower for being so visible . It had the sound of water in it . Whatever lived here spent half its life expecting the running of waveless but briny tides up the creeks , through mud-paved culverts into the dykes that fed the wet marshes with fresh wetness ; and the other half deploring their slow , sluggish sucking back to the sea . Sorrow or any other intemperance of feeling seemed a discourteous disturbance of an atmosphere filled with this resigned harmony .