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.