Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.

The Palace

1902

WHEN I was 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!”