An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a 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 fear 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 will pass this way;
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?"
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-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."
I first heard this in 1943, on a Sunday Morning, Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago, Illinois, at their Chapel Service. My Mom and Dad and I had gone to Chicago to visit with my Brother, Dean Shannon Dooley, who was in the Navy in a V-12 program, and was doing his training there. The Chaplain used this poem as the theme for his sermon. I think of the "builder" often, thinking of the direction that this country is heading, and I think of my children, grand children and great grand children, and shudder, when I see what we are building for them.
