Black empty mouths of craters, grim and cold,
Yawned bottomless, abysmal pits of slag
Amid the desert stretching fold on fold
To distant jagged peak and sharp-thrust crag.
The desolation flooded through my soul—
No living thing relieved the dismal rifts
Of long-past cataclysms; the bleak roll
Of upflung ridge and tangled lava drifts.
It was as if a Titan band had played
With this dead world when it was young and fair,