I heard this poem mentioned by Robert McNamara in a documentary about him that was done by Errol Morris.

The movie is called
"The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara "

I think it's a good poem.

The Palace

by 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, slaked 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."