By Glenn Dromgoole

Will Allen Dromgoole was a prolific poet in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She was born in Tennessee in 1860 and died there in 1934. She wrote more than 7,000 poems and a dozen books. 

For a brief time in the late 1890s, she lived in Texas and even had a speaking gig in Abilene in April 1898. The Abilene Daily Reporter stated that “unseasonably cold weather deprived many of the treat given at Library Hall in Will Allen Dromgoole’s recital…. We never saw an Abilene audience enjoy anything so much as this recital and everyone present regretted that his neighbors were not there.”

Miss Dromgoole’s most famous poem was “The Bridge Builder,” which has been a favorite in my family for as long as I can remember. I included it in a couple of my books, and my dad could recite the poem even after he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. My brother read the poem at his funeral.

The legendary University of Texas football coach, Darrell Royal, had difficulty making speeches early in his coaching career. A friend gave him “The Bridge Builder” and told him to learn it and quote it by heart, and that helped him get over his fear of speaking.

The great inspirational author and minister, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, included the poem in his book, My Inspirational Favorites. 

People have sent me many copies of the poem over the years. I saw it posted in the window of a downtown Abilene business a few years ago, and it was credited to “Anonymous.” I let the proprietor know it wasn’t anonymous. 

I had heard of Will Allen Dromgoole most of my life, but I didn’t know if I was directly related to her. Last year my daughter did one of those DNA tests, and I learned Will Allen was my great-grandfather’s first cousin, which I think makes her my first cousin three times removed, or something like that.

Here’s her poem, “The Bridge Builder.”

The Bridge Builder
By Will Allen Dromgoole (1860-1934)

An old man traveling 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 held no fears for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” cried a fellow pilgrim near,
“You’re wasting your time in building here.
Your journey will end with the closing day;
You never again will pass this way.
You have crossed the chasm deep and wide,
Why build you this bridge at even-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 stream which has been as 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.”

Glenn Dromgoole’s newest book is A Few Words of Encouragement. He and his wife Carol own Texas Star Trading Company in downtown Abilene.