Awesome

The Bridge Builder



This poem speaks of each generation's responsibilities to its successors.




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 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 pitfall be.


He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;


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


Will Allen Dromgoole

Remember

A mirror on the wall,
a hole in the floor and some boards about to fall.
But this ramshackled building holds more then broken relics,
rotting floors,
theres something more then musty smells and the old grandfather clock in the corner that hasn't been working for years,
an old leather chair sits by the hearth and upon the mantlepiece sits a picture,
its frame cleverly carved by sensitive hands,
its all covered in dust and hasn't been touched for ages.
Beside that picture stands a wooden figure carved so long ago,
and as I take it in my hands and blow the dust that has gathered for so many year.
I still remember.