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.