As the Shifting Sands of the Desert.

As the shifting sands of the desert
    Are born by the simoon's wrath,
And in wanton and fleet confusion,
    Are strewn on its trackless path;
So our lives with resistless fury,
    Insensibly and unknown,
With a restless vacillation
    By the winds of fate are blown;
    But an All-Wise Hand
    May have changed the sand,
    For a purpose of His own.

As the troubled and turbulent waters,
    As the waves of the angry main,
Respond with their undulations
    To the breath of the hurricane;
So our lives on Time's boundless ocean
    Unwittingly toss and roll,
And unconsciously drift with the current
    Which evades our assumed control;
    But a Hand of love,
    From the skies above,
    May have guided us past a shoal.

Ephemeral, mobile, and fleeting,
    Our delible paths we tread;
And fade as the crimson sunset,
    When the heavens are tinged with red;
As the gorgeously tinted rainbow
    Retains not its varied dyes,
    We change, with the constant mutation,
    Of desert, of sea, and skies;
    But the Hand which made,
    Knows each transient shade,
    Which passes before the eyes.