This poem has inspired me so much over the years.  This poem speaks of each generation's responsibility 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."