For there in the middle of the waiting-hall
Should be standing the one that I love best of all.
If he's not there to meet me when I get to town
I'll stand on the side-walk with tears rolling down.
For he is the one that I love to look on,
The acme of kindness and perfection.
He presses my hand and he says he loves me,
Which I find an admirable peculiarity.
The woods are bright green on both sides of the line,
The trees have their loves though they're different from mine.
But the poor fat old banker in the sun-parlour car
Has no one to love him except his cigar.
If I were the Head of the Church or the State,
I'd powder my nose and just tell them to wait.
For love's more important and powerful than
Even a priest or a politician.
Auden appreciated, and utilzed, the range of possibilities offered by rhyme. In this poem of  rhyming couplets,  the rhymes are used for various different effects. In this case, “just tell them to wait” stands in humorous contrast with “Head of the Church or the State”: the latter phrase is long and fussily formal, whilst the former is clipped and idiomatic. 
 
 It paves the way for the speaker stating the contrast more directly in the final couplet.
Calypso