THE BRIDGE BUILDER
An old man going a lone highway Came at the evening cold and gray To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
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 your time with building here,
You never again will pass this way,
Your journey will end with the closing day.
You have crossed the chasm deep and wide,
Why build you this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head,
“Good friend, in the way that I’ve come,” he said, "There followeth after me today,
A youth whose feet must pass this way,
This stream that has been as naught to me To the fair-haired youth might a pit-fail be.
I-ie, too. must cross in the twilight dim,
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him!”
—Anon.
The bridge builder poem appeared in the Chronicle Star (Pascagoula), August 10, 1928