The Palace

  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 the 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,
  ‘And 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
     shears.
  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!_