Whenever the everyday burdens of the job get you down; whenever you get depressed; whenever a student, parent or supervisor picks on you; whenever you forget why you became an educator; I need your to read this poem and remember.
The Bridge Builder
By Will Allen Dromgoogle
(1860 – 1934)
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 it 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 will never cross 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 this bridge for him.”