{
 "id": "george-macdonald/my-heart-thy-lark",
 "title": "My Heart Thy Lark",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "George MacDonald",
 "poet_slug": "george-macdonald",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Volume I",
 "book_slug": "poetical-works-vol-1",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 63,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1893,
  "venue": "The Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Volume I (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/poeticalworks01macduoft",
   "https://archive.org/metadata/poeticalworks01macduoft",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9543"
  ]
 },
 "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": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Why dost thou want to sing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When thou hast no song, my heart?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "If there be in thee a hidden spring,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wherefore will no word start?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "On its way thou hearest no song,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet flutters thy unborn joy!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The years of thy life are growing long⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Art still the heart of a boy?⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Father, I am thy child!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My heart is in thy hand!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Let it hear some echo, with gladness wild,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a song in thy high land.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It will answer⁠—but how, my God,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou knowest; I cannot say:",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "It will spring, I know, thy lark, from thy sod⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy lark to meet thy day!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}