e Bridge Builder
An old man going a lone highway
came in the evening, cold and gray,
to a chasm vast, both deep and wide.
e old man crossed in the twilight dim;
the swollen stream was as naught to him;
but he stopped when safe on the farther side
and built a bridge to span the tide.
"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,
"you are wasting your strength in labor here;
Your journey will end with the closing day,
you never again will pass this way.
You've crossed the chasm deep and wide;
Why build you this bridge at eventide?"
e laborer lied his old gray head,
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"ere followeth aer me today
a youth whose feet must pass this way.
is chasm which has been naught to me
to that young man may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim.
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."
– Miss Will Allen Dromgoole
