{
 "id": "george-macdonald/a-gift",
 "title": "A Gift",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "George MacDonald",
 "poet_slug": "george-macdonald",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "A Hidden Life and Other Poems",
 "book_slug": "a-hidden-life-and-other-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 1,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1864,
  "venue": "A Hidden Life and Other Poems (1864)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1864 volume A Hidden Life and Other Poems, which is the printing this text derives from rather than the poem's first appearance: the same poems stand at the same page numbers in MacDonald's Poems (London, 1857), so an earlier printing is known and 1864 is not it. Whether the 1857 volume or a periodical printed the poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_N7tfAAAAMAAJ",
   "https://archive.org/details/hiddenlifeandoth00macduoft",
   "https://archive.org/metadata/hiddenlifeandoth00macduoft"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/george-macdonald_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1953",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8949",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9543",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9984",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10578",
   "https://archive.org/details/bookofstrifeinfo00macd",
   "https://archive.org/details/discipleandothe02macdgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/hiddenlifeandoth00macduoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/discipleandothe02macdgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/rampolli00macd",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102955776",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011821572"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 47,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "My gift would find thee fast asleep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And arise a dream in thee;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "A violet sky o’er the roll and sweep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a purple and pallid sea;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And a crescent moon from my sky should creep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the golden dream to thee.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou shouldst lay thee down, and sadly list",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the wail of our cold birth-time;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And build thee a temple, glory-kissed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the heart of the sunny clime;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Its columns should rise in a music-mist,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And its roofs in a spirit-rhyme.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Its pillars the solemn hills should bind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Neath arches of starry deeps;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Its floor the earth all veined and lined;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its organ the ocean-sweeps;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And, swung in the hands of the grey-robed wind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its censers the blossom-heaps.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And ’tis almost done; for in this my rhyme,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thanks to thy mirror-soul,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou wilt see the mountains, and hear the chime",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the waters after the roll;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And the stars of my sky thy sky will climb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And with heaven roof in the whole.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}