LamentationsI. Ah, look how the township sits solitary that was so full of people: look how she sits like a weeping widow, the town that just yesterday! sat queen of Murrindindi, and of the Great Dividing Range, that sat jewel in the crown of all Melbourne.Black is the only one here: black is the only one left: whichever way we turn it is black who meets our eye, black who shakes our hand, black who murmurs nothing in our ear.Can you believe it?Do you believe what you see?Everything is missing now, there is no movement in the bush: everything is gone and there is no bush.Flora, fauna, family.Gone.How has it all come to this?It has all come to this: the township is gone into dissolution, she that breathed free: she has no breath, and she is dissolved: up between the mountains, and down between the hills, and in between the hours of the day.Jehovah, even the soil is vanished into air, become as a vapour into the sweet summer air: and the ground that we tread is powder to our foot: that is black, that is dust, that is black and dust, that is clogging to the sole of our foot.Kinglake and the ways to Kinglake do mourn: all her gates are desolate: her hilltops sigh, her soil is afflicted, and she is in bitterness black.Look! all her beauty is departed: her trees are become like hearts without pasture, and they are gone without strength in the moment of the day.Murrindindi is without strength, without sound.Nothing is moving, there is no movement in the bush: nothing is moving and the bush is soft without sound.O! Kinglake is fallen into the hand of the fire, and she is removed: the black is in her hair, and in her skirts: the black is in her memory, in the just yesterday! of green.Prayer has not prevailed: from above and from below the firestorm is come: from the north and from the south the firestorm is come, and the township is come down wonderfully.Queen of the ranges, and of the Murrindindi Shire, Kinglake is undone: she sits silent without lover or friend: she slumps in her blackened skirts: she slumps in black dust: she slumps in her