Away amidst the desert wastes,
Underneath a furnace sun,
Great stones stand, reaching upward from the plains,
While strong winds, streaming free across bare land,
Make sharp, hard currents of the sand
And scourge the towering rocks continually,
Smoothing, shaping, sculpting,
Their impassioned rush fashioning something new,
Monuments of firm, enduring glory
From Nature’s hard and patient hand.

Walking the burnt, bare wilderness of self-denial
Beneath the Spirit’s ineffable fire,
Our spirits worn and chiseled by the swirling, sandy winds
Of trials that with love we bear,
Yet may joy’s deep torrent through us flow,
For our great Sculptor guides the wind,
And plies it, not to wear us all away,
But that our sculpted souls might take the shape—
From earthly roughness hewn to glorious shape—
Of that which they were always meant to be.