| FAINT white pillars that seem to fade | |
| As you look from here are the first one sees | |
| Of his house where it hides and dies in a shade | |
| Of beeches and oaks and hickory trees. | |
| Now many a man, given woods like these, | 5 |
| And a house like that, and the Briony gold, | |
| Would have said, “There are still some gods to please, | |
| And houses are built without hands, we’re told.” | |
| |
| There are the pillars, and all gone gray. | |
| Briony’s hair went white. You may see | 10 |
| Where the garden was if you come this way. | |
| That sun-dial scared him, he said to me; | |
| “Sooner or later they strike,” said he, | |
| And he never got that from the books he read. | |
| Others are flourishing, worse than he, | 15 |
| But he knew too much for the life he led. | |
| |
| And who knows all knows everything | |
| That a patient ghost at last retrieves; | |
| There’s more to be known of his harvesting | |
| When Time the thresher unbinds the sheaves; | 20 |
| And there’s more to be heard than a wind that grieves | |
| For Briony now in this ageless oak, | |
| Driving the first of its withered leaves | |
| Over the stones where the fountain broke. | |
