Lists are flattened in Perl. Therefore,

qw[this is the first line],
qw[second one is here]
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is exactly the same as

qw[this is the first line second one is here]
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How can Perl get your first line?

You probably want this:

my @refarray = ([qw/this is the first line/],
                [qw/second one is here/],
               );
print "@{$refarray[0]}\n";
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Updated.