{
 "id": "george-macdonald/longing",
 "title": "Longing",
 "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": null,
 "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": 36,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 57,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "My heart is full of inarticulate pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And beats laborious. Cold ungenial looks",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Invade my sanctuary. Men of gain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wise in success, well-read in feeble books,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "No nigher come, I pray: your air is drear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis winter and low skies when ye appear.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Beloved, who love beauty and fair truth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come nearer me; too near ye cannot come;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Make me an atmosphere with your sweet youth;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give me your souls to breathe in, a large room;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Speak not a word, for, see, my spirit lies",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Helpless and dumb; shine on me with your eyes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O all wide places, far from feverous towns;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Great shining seas; pine forests; mountains wild;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Rock-bosomed shores; rough heaths, and sheep-cropt downs;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Vast pallid clouds; blue spaces undefiled⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Room! give me room! give loneliness and air⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Free things and plenteous in your regions fair!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "White dove of David, flying overhead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Golden with sunlight on thy snowy wings,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Outspeeding thee my longing thoughts are fled",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To find a home afar from men of things;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Where in his temple, earth o’erarched with sky,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "God’s heart to mine may speak, my heart reply.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O God of mountains, stars, and boundless spaces,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O God of freedom and of joyous hearts,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "When thy face looketh forth from all men’s faces,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There will be room enough in crowded marts!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Brood thou around me, and the noise is o’er,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy universe my closet with shut door.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Heart, heart, awake! The love that loveth all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Maketh a deeper calm than Horeb’s cave.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "God in thee, can his children’s folly gall?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love may be hurt, but shall not love be brave?⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy holy silence sinks in dews of balm;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou art my solitude, my mountain-calm!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}