{
 "id": "george-macdonald/to-my-sister",
 "title": "To My Sister",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": "On Her Twenty-First Birthday",
 "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": 45,
 "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": 36,
  "n_stanzas": 9,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 37,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Old fables are not all a lie",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That tell of wondrous birth,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of Titan children, father Sky,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And mighty mother Earth.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yea, now are walking on the ground",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sons of the mingled brood;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Yea, now upon the earth are found",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such daughters of the Good.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Earth-born, my sister, thou art still",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A daughter of the sky;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh, climb for ever up the hill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of thy divinity!",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To thee thy mother Earth is sweet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her face to thee is fair;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But thou, a goddess incomplete,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Must climb the starry stair.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Wouldst thou the holy hill ascend,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wouldst see the Father’s face?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "To all his other children bend,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And take the lowest place.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Be like a cottage on a moor,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A covert from the wind,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "With burning fire and open door,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And welcome free and kind.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thus humbly doing on the earth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The things the earthly scorn,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou shalt declare the lofty birth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all the lowly born.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Be then thy sacred womanhood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A sign upon thee set,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "A second baptism⁠—understood⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For what thou must be yet.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For, cause and end of all thy strife,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And unrest as thou art,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Still stings thee to a higher life",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Father at thy heart.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}