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.