{
 "id": "george-macdonald/song-of-the-innocents",
 "title": "Song of the Innocents",
 "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": 33,
 "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": {
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  "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": 10,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 50,
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 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Merry, merry we well may be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For Jesus Christ is come down to see:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Long before, at the top of the stair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He set our angels a waiting there,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Waiting hither and thither to fly,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tending the children of the sky,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lest they dash little feet against big stones,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And tumble down and break little bones;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the path is rough, and we must not roam;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We have learned to walk, and must follow him home!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}