I have printed this before, it always comes to mind around the holiday season. The first time I heard it was 1943, my Brother was in the Navy at Great Lakes in Chicago. We drove up from Ohio to see him. We went to a Sunday Morning church service while there. I remember Eddy Peabody, the Banjo King, was there, and played some hymns on his banjo. The Chaplain used this poem in his sermon. I was only 11, and was awed by the whole visit. Probably the only sermon I actually remember.
The Bridge Builder
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-haired 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
