<i>1902</i> <br /> <br /> <br />When I was a King and a Mason - a Master proven and skilled - <br />I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build. <br />I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt, <br />I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built. <br /> <br />There was no worth in the fashion - there was no wit in the plan - <br />Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran - <br />Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone: <br />'After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known.' <br /> <br />Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew, <br />I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew. <br />Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it, slacked it, and spread; <br />Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead. <br /> <br />Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart, <br />I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder's heart. <br />As he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand <br />The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned. <br /> <br />* * * * * <br /> <br />When I was a King and a Mason - in the open noon of my pride, <br />They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside. <br />They said - 'The end is forbidden.' They said - 'Thy use is fulfilled. <br />'Thy Palace shall stand as that other's - the spoil of a King who shall build.' <br /> <br />I called my men from my trenches, my quarries, my wharves, and my sheers. <br />All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years. <br />Only I cut on the timber - only I carved on the stone: <br /><i>'After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known! '</i><br /><br />Rudyard Kipling<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-palace/
