{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/god-gave-to-me-a-child-in-part",
 "title": "God Gave to Me a Child in Part",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Poems and Variant Readings",
 "book_slug": "new-poems-and-variant-readings",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 89,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1918,
  "venue": "New Poems and Variant Readings (1918)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1918 Chatto & Windus volume. That is not the first printing: this volume's own preface credits the Bibliophile Society of Boston with having first given these poems light in a privately printed edition. The year of that edition, and which poems it carried, are not established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newpoemsandvaria00stevuoft"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-louis-stevenson_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://archive.org/details/worksofrobertlvol28stev",
   "https://archive.org/details/worksofrobertlou14stev",
   "https://archive.org/details/newpoemsandvaria00stevuoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemshithertounp00stevrich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31291",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30659",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/441",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems,_by_Robert_Louis_Stevenson,_hitherto_unpublished"
  ],
  "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": 47,
  "max_indent": 0
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 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "God gave to me a child in part,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet wholly gave the father’s heart:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Child of my soul, O whither now,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unborn, unmothered, goest thou?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "You came, you went, and no man wist;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hapless, my child, no breast you kist;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On no dear knees, a privileged babbler, clomb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor knew the kindly feel of home.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My voice may reach you, O my dear⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A father’s voice perhaps the child may hear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, pitying, you may turn your view",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On that poor father whom you never knew.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Alas! alone he sits, who then,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Immortal among mortal men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sat hand in hand with love, and all day through",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With your dear mother wondered over you.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}