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 cros in the twilight dim;
  Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."
          - Will Allen Dromgoode (1934)