{
 "id": "george-macdonald/false-prophets",
 "title": "False Prophets",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "George MacDonald",
 "poet_slug": "george-macdonald",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Volume II",
 "book_slug": "poetical-works-vol-2",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 36,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1893,
  "venue": "The Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Volume II (1893)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1893 collected Poetical Works, which is the printing this text is and not the poem's first appearance. MacDonald gathered and revised for it work published from 1855 onward, and it arranges the poems by its own editorial grouping rather than by the volumes they came from, so which earlier book or magazine printed this poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksge00macdgoog",
   "https://archive.org/metadata/poeticalworksge00macdgoog",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9984"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
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  "repo": "standardebooks/george-macdonald_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
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   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8949",
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   "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": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 28,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Would-be prophets tell us",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We shall not re-know",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Them that walked our fellows",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the ways below!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Smoking, smouldering Tophets",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Steaming hopeless plaints!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Dreary, mole-eyed prophets!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mean, skin-pledging saints!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Knowing not the Father",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What their prophecies!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Grapes of such none gather,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only thorns and lies.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Loving thus the brother,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How the Father tell?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Go without each other",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To your heavenly hell!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}