Source identified1
Read & copy
“The watch is long betimes and late, The prize is slow to win.”
Meaning & context
The devotional poem acknowledges prolonged waiting and delayed fulfillment directly, making patience meaningful precisely because the hoped-for result is slow.
Source details
‘Advent,’ second stanza, in Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg #16950. ‘The watch is long betimes and late, / The prize is slow to win’ belongs to Rossetti's explicitly Christian devotional waiting; later stanzas name Christ and Jesus Christ directly. It is devotional poetry rather than a secular guarantee that persistence produces a reward.
