Jade in the Cut Stone

Stone has to be cut before jade appears, and sand has to be washed before gold shows. A road eventually exists up into the blue sky. One concern remains in the last line, that the heart doing the work might not hold.

With this grade, Dai-kichi, Great good fortune, as the book prints it, labor comes attached. The jade and the gold are real in the poem and each sits behind a tedious process, while the final line names resolve as the one weak point.

In everyday terms today, this describes long and repetitive work whose result is invisible for most of its length. How would you know the difference between sand that holds nothing and a pan that has not been washed long enough?