An old man, going a lone highway,

Came at the evening, cold and gray,

To chasm, vast and deep and wide,

Through which was flowing a sullen tide,

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;

The sullen stream had no fears for him;

But he turned when safe on the other side

And built a bridge to span the tide.

 

“Old man”, said a fellow pilgrim near,

“You are wasting strength with building here;

Your journey will end with the ending day;

You never again must pass this way;

You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide-

Why build you the bridge at the eventide?”

 

The builder lifted his old gray head:

“Good friend, in the path I have come”, he said,

“There followeth after me today

A youth whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm that has been naught to me

To that fair-haried youth may a pit-fall be,

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”

 

—–Will Allen Dromgoole

 

Amazing poem I came across this morning. How may of us are building bridges for the ones following us???