luk3thomas

                    ~~~ The Palace ~~~
                 by Rudyard Kipling, 1902

  When I was a King and a Mason -- a Master proven and skilled --
  I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
  I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt,
  I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.

  There was no worth in the fashion -- there was no wit in the plan --
  Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran --
  Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:
  "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known."

  Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew,
  I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew.
  Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it, slacked it, and spread;
  Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.

  Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart,
  I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder's heart.
  As he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand
  The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned.

  When I was a King and a Mason -- in the open noon of my pride,
  They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside.
  They said -- "The end is forbidden." They said -- "Thy use is fulfilled.
  "Thy Palace shall stand as that other's -- the spoil of a King who shall build."

  I called my men from my trenches, my quarries, my wharves, and my sheers.
  All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years.
  Only I cut on the timber -- only I carved on the stone:
  "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known!"