The
Palace
by Bro. Rudyard Kipling
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 groundworks grew,
I tumbled
his quoins and his ashlars,
And cut and rest 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 foundation
The heart of that
builder's heart.
As he has 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." back to top |
