Thus by tracking our footprints in the sand we track our own nature in its wayward course , and steal a glance upon it when it never dreams of being so observed . Such glances always make us wiser . This extensive beach affords room for another pleasant pastime . With your staff you may write verses -- love-verses if they please you best -- and consecrate them with a woman 's name . Here , too , may be inscribed thoughts , feelings , desires , warm outgushings from the heart 's secret places , which you would not pour upon the sand without the certainty that almost ere the sky has looked upon them the sea will wash them out . Stir not hence till the record be effaced . Now -LRB- for there is room enough on your canvas -RRB- draw huge faces -- huge as that of the Sphynx on Egyptian sands -- and fit them with bodies of corresponding immensity and legs which might stride halfway to yonder island . Child 's - play becomes magnificent on so grand a scale . But , after all , the most fascinating employment is simply to write your name in the sand . Draw the letters gigantic , so that two strides may barely measure them , and three for the long strokes ; cut deep , that the record may be permanent . Statesmen and warriors and poets have spent their strength in no better cause than this . Is it accomplished ? Return , then , in an hour or two , and seek for this mighty record of a name . The sea will have swept over it , even as time rolls its effacing waves over the names of statesmen and warriors and poets . Hark ! the surf-wave laughs at you . Passing from the beach , I begin to clamber over the crags , making my difficult way among the ruins of a rampart shattered and broken by the assaults of a fierce enemy . The rocks rise in every variety of attitude . Some of them have their feet in the foam and are shagged halfway upward with seaweed ; some have been hollowed almost into caverns by the unwearied toil of the sea , which can afford to spend centuries in wearing away a rock , or even polishing a pebble . One huge rock ascends in monumental shape , with a face like a giant 's tombstone , on which the veins resemble inscriptions , but in an unknown tongue .
We will fancy them the forgotten characters of an antediluvian race , or else that Nature 's own hand has here recorded a mystery which , could I read her language , would XXXXX mankind the wiser and the happier .
Draw Passing affords effaced fit inscribed make resemble toil track