Why call you Devil’s Bridge –
when each flowing ridge
comes steeply, greenly down
to merge and meet beside
the Mynach river’s path?
Can Satan ever live
where such glories give
a stillness to the soul,
that gazes on the sight
of Nature at its best?
No place for Lucifer,
shades of conifer
and oak, the forest troop
that marches proudly hill
to hill in pageant green,
adjacent soda stream
pouring sparkled cream
down open black rock throat,
from pool to turmoiled pool,
to rapid valley flow.
No room for Prince of Death
in vast heaven’s breath
that spreads its covering shell,
its blue and vacant arc,
across each smoothing mount,
and every valley fills,
calmness there instils
with gentle lantern light,
whose vastness brightly greets
a single buzzard’s glide.
Beelzebub abide
at this river’s side?
No rock nor leaf can be
a home for evil’s touch:
Creator guards each part,
since vale displays his scheme,
perfect as his dream –
unless some human heart
holds acid waterfall,
black rocks his darkened heart,
whose sight this view refused,
beauty much abused,
by bitter feelings marred
loose scattered in his soul
where shadowed Satan stands.
But man and Devil pass
to some other grass,
so ever dancing stream
is left forever pure
to flow through heaven’s bridge.
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