Let us keep each other 's secrets . The sunshine has now passed from my hermitage , except a gleam upon the sand just where it meets the sea . A crowd of gloomy fantasies will come and haunt me if I tarry longer here in the darkening twilight of these gray rocks . This is a dismal place in some moods of the mind . Climb we , therefore , the precipice , and pause a moment on the brink gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep where we have been what few can be -- sufficient to our own pastime . Yes , say the word outright : self-sufficient to our own happiness . How lonesome looks the recess now , and dreary too , like all other spots where happiness has been ! There lies my shadow in the departing sunshine with its head upon the sea . I will pelt it with pebbles . A hit ! a hit ! I clap my hands in triumph , and see my shadow clapping its unreal hands and claiming the triumph for itself . What a simpleton must I have been all day , since my own shadow makes a mock of my fooleries ! Homeward ! homeward ! It is time to hasten home . It is time -- it is time ; for as the sun sinks over the western wave the sea grows melancholy and the surf has a saddened tone . The distant sails appear astray and not of earth in their remoteness amid the desolate waste . My spirit wanders forth afar , but finds no resting-place and comes shivering back . It is time that I were hence .
But grudge me not the day that has been spent in seclusion which yet was not solitude , since the great sea has been my companion , and the little sea-birds my friends , and the wind has told me his secrets , and airy shapes have flitted around me in my XXXXX .
crowd day fooleries happiness hermitage mind pastime recess resting-place twilight