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 betweenThe Burn o' Sorrow and the Water o' Care;And from the stillness of the down-crushed wallsOne 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.