{
 "id": "matthew-arnold/to-a-gipsy-child-by-the-seashore",
 "title": "To a Gipsy Child by the Seashore",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": "Douglas, Isle of Man",
 "poet": "Matthew Arnold",
 "poet_slug": "matthew-arnold",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems",
 "book_slug": "the-strayed-reveller",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1849,
  "venue": "The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/strayedrevellero00arno"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/matthew-arnold_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27739",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofmatthewar00arnouoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofm00arn",
   "https://archive.org/details/inmemoriamawrea00marsgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 68,
  "n_stanzas": 17,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Who taught this pleading to unpractis’d eyes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who hid such import in an infant’s gloom?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What clouds thy forehead, and fore-dates thy doom?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lo! sails that gleam a moment and are gone;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The swinging waters, and the cluster’d pier.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not idly Earth and Ocean labour on,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But thou, whom superfluity of joy",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor weariness, the full-fed soul’s annoy;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Remaining in thy hunger and thy pain;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From thine own mother’s breast, that knows not thee;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With eyes which sought thine eyes thou didst converse,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And that soul-searching vision fell on me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Glooms that go deep as thine I have not known:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Moods of fantastic sadness, nothing worth.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy sorrow and thy calmness are thine own:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Glooms that enhance and glorify this earth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What mood wears like complexion to thy woe?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His, who in mountain glens, at noon of day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sits rapt, and hears the battle break below?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah! thine was not the shelter, but the fray.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What exile’s, changing bitter thoughts wth glad?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What seraph’s, in some alien planet born?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No exile’s dream was ever half so sad,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor any angel’s sorrow so forlorn.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Is the calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But in disdainful silence turn away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Or do I wait, to hear some grey-hair’d king",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unravel all his many-colour’d lore:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose mind hath known all arts of governing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mus’d much, lov’d life a little, loath’d it more?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Down the pale cheek long lines of shadow slope",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou hast foreknown the vanity of hope,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Foreseen thy harvest⁠—yet proceed’st to live.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O meek anticipant of that sure pain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose sureness gray-hair’d scholars hardly learn!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What wonder shall time breed, to swell thy strain?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What heavens, what earth, what sun shalt thou discern?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ere the long night, whose stillness brooks no star,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Match that funereal aspect with her pall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I think, thou wilt have fathom’d life too far,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have known too much⁠—or else forgotten all.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The Guide of our dark steps a triple veil",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Betwixt our senses and our sorrow keeps:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hath sown with cloudless passages the tale",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of grief, and eas’d us with a thousand sleeps.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not daily labour’s dull, Lethaean spring,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oblivion in lost angels can infuse",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the soil’d glory, and the trailing wing;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And though thou glean, what strenuous gleaners may,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the throng’d fields where winning comes by strife;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And though the just sun gild, as all men pray,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some reaches of thy storm-vext stream of life;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Though that blank sunshine blind thee: though the cloud",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That sever’d the world’s march and thine, is gone;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though ease dulls grace, and Wisdom be too proud",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To halve a lodging that was all her own:",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Once, ere the day decline, thou shalt discern,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh once, ere night, in thy success, thy chain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ere the long evening close, thou shalt return,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wear this majesty of grief again.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}