The Giver
To give a thing and take againIs counted meanness among men;To take away what once is givenCannot then be the way of heaven!
But human hearts are crumbly stuff,And never, never love enough,Therefore God takes and, with a smile,Puts our best things away a while.
Thereon some weep, some rave, some scorn,Some wish they never had been born;Some humble grow at last and still,And then God gives them what they will.
Words in this poem
- crumbly a.
- EAsily crumbled; friable; brittle.
- thereon adv.
- On that or this. [AS. . See There, and On.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Giver is in the public domain. This text is taken from The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #9984; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: George MacDonald, The Giver, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/the-giver.html, id L22299.
Form and metre
The Giver is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is AABB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AAAA againA · menA · givenA · heavenA
- 2 AABB stuffA · enoughA · smileB · whileB
- 3 AABB scornA · bornA · stillB · willB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| To give a thing and take again | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Is counted meanness among men; | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| To take away what once is given | 9 | ··˘/···/˘ |
| Cannot then be the way of heaven! | 9 | ˘/·····/˘ |
| But human hearts are crumbly stuff, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And never, never love enough, | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| Therefore God takes and, with a smile, | 8 | ········ |
| Puts our best things away a while. | 8 | ·/··˘/·· |
| Thereon some weep, some rave, some scorn, | 8 | ˘/······ |
| Some wish they never had been born; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Some humble grow at last and still, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| And then God gives them what they will. | 8 | ········ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.