Poems (Bushnell)/Delay

by Frances Louisa Bushnell

XLI
DELAY

Taste the sweetness of delaying,
Till the hour shall come for saying
  That I love you with my soul:
Have you never thought your heart
Finds a something in the part,
  It would miss from out the whole?

In this rosebud you have given,
Sleeps that perfect rose of heaven
  That in Fancy's garden blows:
Wake it not by touch or sound,
Lest perchance 'twere lost, not found,
  In the opening of the rose.

Dear to me is this reflection,
Of a fair and far perfection,
  Shining through a veil undrawn:
Ask no question then of fate;
Yet a little longer wait
  In the beauty of the dawn.

Through our mornings, veiled and tender,
Shines a day of golden splendor,
  Never yet fulfilled by day:
Ah! if love be made complete,
Will it, can it, be so sweet
  As this ever sweet delay?