The Bridge Builder
The Bridge Builder is a poem written by Will Allen Dromgoole. "The Bridge Builder" has been frequently reprinted, including on a plaque on the Bellows Falls, Vermont Vilas Bridge in New Hampshire. It continues to be quoted frequently, usually in a religious context or in writings stressing a moral lesson.
![](../I/m/Tokaido26_Kakegawa.jpg)
"The Bridge Builder" is also used by many fraternal organizations to promote the idea of building links for the future and passing the torch along for the next generation .
It was possibly first published in 1900 in the now rare book A Builder.[1]
The poem appears below in its entirety;
The Bridge Builder
![](../I/m/31-poem-plaque-on-Vilas-Bridge.jpg)
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."
References
- Dromgoole, Will Allen (1931). "The Bridge Builder". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 19 May 2013.