Poems (Jordan)/Wait
WAIT
If we could only hear the promise breathed Beneath the tiny leaf, and understandIts living words, which come in fragrance wreathe d, Would we haste its unfolding with our hand?Or, if we saw the thorns upon the stem, Which are in the surrounding beauty sheathed,Would we thus grasp so eagerly at them?
The leaf gives promise of the flow'r beneath, Whose life shall patiently unfold to blessThe very atmosphere with ev'ry breath;— It waits to live,—shall human greedinessProfane the message of the spotless flow'r, And, hasting on its life, haste also on its death?Can we not "watch, with it, one little hour?"
With ev'ry life akin in sympathy Our love would prompt us watch and wait, oh, then,If there between souls is affinity, Like that felt by the Lord for human pain,Together we will wait the dark hours through— The hours of night and blood-browed agony—For coming of the perfect life so true!
We only prick our fingers when we haste To grasp the Thing when but in Promise giv'n,And strew the coming time with hours of waste, Wherein had blossomed the desired of Heav'n.Then let us by experience be taught The cup's bright contents not so quick to taste,Which is, perhaps, but partly mingled draught.
Can we not wait to live, or live to wait? One lived to wait for the auspicious hourWhich passed unwaited with, within the Gate Which opened through the gloom, to Eden's bow'r;—Waited to live, the full-grown Life to give For and to us, and shall we hesitateTo live to wait, or, such life, wait to live?