EMPLOYMENT.
If as a flower doth spread and die,
Thou wouldst extend me to some good,
Before I were by frost’s extremity,
Nipt in the bud—
The sweetness and the praise were thine;
But the extension and the room
Which in thy garland I should fill, were mine
At thy great doom.
For as thou dost impart thy grace,
The greater shall our glory be;
The measure of our joys is in this place,
The stuff with thee.
Let me not languish then, and send
A life as barren to thy praise
As is the dust, to which that life doth tend,
But with delays.
All things are busy; only I
Neither bring honey with the bees,
Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry
To water these.
I am no link of thy great chain,
But all my company is as a weed:
Lord place me in thy concert—give one strain
To my poor reed.
George Herbert, 1593–1632.