Jean Ingelow Quote

The while He sits whose name is Love,
And waits, as Noah did, for the dove,
To wit if she would fly to him. He waits for us, while, houseless things,
We beat about with bruised wings
On the dark floods and water-springs,
The ruined world, the desolate sea;
With open windows from the prime
All night, all day, He waits sublime,
Until the fulness of the time
Decreed from His eternity.

"Scholar and Carpenter", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).