{
 "id": "george-macdonald/to-my-father",
 "title": "To My Father",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": "With My Second Volume of Verse",
 "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": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 49,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Take of the first fruits, Father, of thy care,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wrapped in the fresh leaves of my gratitude",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Late waked for early gifts ill understood;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Claiming in all my harvests rightful share,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whether with song that mounts the joyful air",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I praise my God; or, in yet deeper mood,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Sit dumb because I know a speechless good,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Needing no voice, but all the soul for prayer.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou hast been faithful to my highest need;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "And I, thy debtor, ever, evermore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall never feel the grateful burden sore.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet most I thank thee, not for any deed,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But for the sense thy living self did breed",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "That fatherhood is at the great world’s core.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "All childhood, reverence clothed thee, undefined,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As for some being of another race;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah! not with it departing⁠—grown apace",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "As years have brought me manhood’s loftier mind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Able to see thy human life behind⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The same hid heart, the same revealing face⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "My own dim contest settling into grace",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of sorrow, strife, and victory combined.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So I beheld my God, in childhood’s morn,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "A mist, a darkness, great, and far apart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Moveless and dim⁠—I scarce could say “Thou art:”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My manhood came, of joy and sadness born⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Full soon the misty dark, asunder torn,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Revealed man’s glory, God’s great human heart.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}