{
 "id": "george-macdonald/the-giver",
 "title": "The Giver",
 "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": 35,
 "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": [
   "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": 12,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 41,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "To give a thing and take again",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is counted meanness among men;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To take away what once is given",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cannot then be the way of heaven!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But human hearts are crumbly stuff,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And never, never love enough,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Therefore God takes and, with a smile,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Puts our best things away a while.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thereon some weep, some rave, some scorn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some wish they never had been born;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some humble grow at last and still,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then God gives them what they will.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}