Read "The Palace" by Rudyard Kipling online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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._'