. . . God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his State is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait.

These lines come from John Milton’s sonnet commonly titled “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” (also known as Sonnet XIX). Milton wrote it after he had become blind (by the early 1650s) while serving the English Commonwealth, a period when he felt his ability to “serve” through writing and public labor had been curtailed. The poem dramatizes his anxiety that his “one talent” is now unusable, and then answers that fear through a turn to patient faith. The quoted passage is the sonnet’s closing resolution, reframing service to God not as constant outward activity but as obedient endurance under providence.

Milton contrasts restless, visible service (“Thousands at his bidding speed / And post o’er Land and Ocean”) with a quieter form of devotion: accepting God’s “mild yoke” and waiting faithfully. The passage argues that divine sovereignty (“his State / is Kingly”) makes human productivity unnecessary to God; what matters is the disposition of obedience rather than the scale of achievement. In the sonnet’s context, this becomes a hard-won consolation for disability and limitation: the inability to work as before is not spiritual failure. The famous final line elevates patience—steadfast presence, readiness, and trust—as genuine service, challenging a purely activist or merit-based view of vocation.

1) “They also serve who only stand and wait.” (often quoted alone)
2) “God does not need / Either man’s work or his own gifts…” (modernized spelling in some editions)