C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Frances Louisa Bushnell (1834–1899)

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?