PALACE
When I was a King and a Mason,
a Master proven and skilled,
I cleared me a ground for a palace,
such as a King should build.
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I decreed and cut down to my levels,
but presently under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a palace,
such as a king had built.
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There was no worth in the fashion,
there was no wit in the plan.
Hither and thither aimless,
the ruined footings ran.
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Masonry, brute, mishandled,
but carved on every stone.
"After me cometh a Builder,
tell him I, too, have known".
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Swift to my use in the trenches,
where my well-planned ground works grew,
I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars,
and cut and reset them anew.
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Lime I made from his marbles;
burned it, slaked it, and spread,
Taking and leaving, at pleasure,
the gift of the humble dead.
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Yet I despised mot, nor gloried;
for as we wrenched them apart,
I read in the raised foundations
the heart of that builder's heart.
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As though 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.
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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.
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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."
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I called the men from my trenches,
my quarries, my wharves and my shears.
All I had thought I abandoned,
to the faith of the faithless years.
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Only I cut on the timber-only,
I carved on the stone-
"After me cometh a Builder,
tell him I, too, have known."
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By Brother Rudyard Kipling
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