“For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting.”

Book i. Song 2. Compare: "Who then to frail mortality shall trust/ But limns on water, or but writes in dust", Francis Bacon, The World.
Britannia's Pastorals (1613)

Source: Elsewhere

Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: Knowest thou what kind of speck you art in comparison with the Universe?—That is, with respect to the body; since with respect to Reason, thou art not inferior to the Gods, nor less than they. For the greatness of Reason is not measured by length or height, but by the resolves of the mind. Place then thy happiness in that wherein thou art equal to the Gods. (33).

Source: Run, Melos! and Other Stories

"Juan Muraña", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)

"Scholar and Carpenter", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Context: p>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.</p

The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships (2015)

"The Cottage".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
Context: Through the window I can see
Rooks above the cherry-tree,
Sparrows in the violet bed,
Bramble-bush and bumble-bee,
And old red bracken smoulders still
Among boulders on the hill,
Far too bright to seem quite dead.
But old Death, who can't forget,
Waits his time and watches yet,
Waits and watches by the door.

Stanza 14.
Resolution and Independence (1807)