{
 "id": "george-macdonald/up-in-the-tree",
 "title": "Up in the Tree",
 "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": 72,
 "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": {
  "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": 49,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "What would you see, if I took you up",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My little aerie-stair?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "You would see the sky like a clear blue cup",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Turned upside down in the air.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What would you do, up my aerie-stair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In my little nest on the tree?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "With cry upon cry you would ripple the air",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To get at what you would see.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And what would you reach in the top of the tree",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To still your grasping grief?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Not a star would you clutch of all you would see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You would gather just one green leaf.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But when you had lost your greedy grief,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Content to see from afar,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Your hand it would hold a withering leaf,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But your heart a shining star.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}