<i>1902</i>
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 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:
<i>’After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known! ‘</i>
