{
 "id": "george-macdonald/a-song-in-a-dream",
 "title": "A Song in a Dream",
 "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": 7,
 "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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 53,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I dreamed of a song, I heard it sung;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the ear that sleeps not its music rung.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the tones were upheld by harmonies deep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the spirit floated; yea, soared, on their sweep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With each wild unearthly word and tone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upward, it knew not whither bound,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a calm delirium of mystic sound⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up, where the Genius of Thought alone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Loveth in silence to drink his fill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of dews that from unknown clouds distil.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A woman’s voice the deep echoes awoke,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the caverns and solitudes of my soul;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But such a voice had never broke",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through the sea of sounds that about us roll,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Choking the ear in the daylight strife.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There was sorrow and triumph, and death and life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In each chord-note of that prophet-song,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blended in one harmonious throng:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such a chant, ere my voice has fled from death,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be it mine to mould of the parting breath.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}