{
 "id": "henry-van-dyke-jr/transformation",
 "title": "Transformation",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Henry van Dyke Jr.",
 "poet_slug": "henry-van-dyke-jr",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 56,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1920,
  "venue": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1920)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1920 collected edition. That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance: the volume gathers work published from 1897 onward, and which earlier book or magazine printed this poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofhenryvand00vandrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/henry-van-dyke-jr_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16229",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16134",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10679",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3525",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9372",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29314",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43094",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofhenryvand00vandrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/buildersotherpoe00vandrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/toilingoffelixan00vandiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/musicotherpoems0000henr_c7v6",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsnowfirstcol00vanduoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/songsoutofdoors0000vand",
   "https://archive.org/details/thyseaisgreatour00vandiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/chosenpoems0000vand"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 40,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Only a little shrivelled seed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It might be flower, or grass, or weed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only a box of earth on the edge",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a narrow, dusty window-ledge;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only a few scant summer showers;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only a few clear shining hours;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That was all. Yet God could make",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out of these, for a sick child’s sake,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A blossom-wonder, fair and sweet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As ever broke at an angel’s feet.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Only a life of barren pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wet with sorrowful tears for rain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Warmed sometimes by a wandering gleam",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of joy, that seemed but a happy dream;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A life as common and brown and bare",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the box of earth in the window there;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet it bore, at last, the precious bloom",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a perfect soul in that narrow room;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pure as the snowy leaves that fold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over the flower’s heart of gold.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}