In Death Valley

There came gray stretches of volcanic plains,   

Bare, lone and treeless, then a bleak lone hill

Like to the dolorous hill that Dobell saw.   

Around were heaps of ruins piled between   

The Burn o’ Sorrow and the Water o’ Care;   

And from the stillness of the down-crushed walls

One pillar rose up dark against the moon.   

There was a nameless Presence everywhere;   

In the gray soil there was a purple stain,   

And the gray reticent rocks were dyed with blood—

Blood of a vast unknown Calamity.            

It was the mark of some ancestral grief—

Grief that began before the ancient Flood.