Shee Cannot Die for Want of Food
Perhaps for want of food the soule may pine;But that were strange, sith all things bad and good,Sith all God's creature's mortall and diuine,Sith God Himselfe, is her eternall food.
Bodies are fed with things of mortall kind,And so are subiect to mortalitie;But Truth which is eternall, feeds the mind;The Tree of life, which will not let her die.
Words in this poem
- sith prep.
- Since; afterwards; seeing that. [See Since.]
- mortall a.
- Subject to death; destined to die; as, man is mortal. [F. mortel, L. mortalis, from mors, mortis, death, fr. moriri 8die; akin to E. murder. See Murder, and cf. Filemot, Mere a lake, Mortgage.]
- eternall a.
- Without beginning or end of existence; always existing. [F. éternel, L. aeternalis, fr. aeternus. See Etern.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Shee Cannot Die for Want of Food is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poems of Sir John Davies. Volume 1 of 2., Project Gutenberg ebook #44977; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Davies, Shee Cannot Die for Want of Food, in The Complete Poems, Volume I (1596–1599), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #44977, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/davies-poems/shee-cannot-die-for-want-of-food.html, id L08782.
Form and metre
Shee Cannot Die for Want of Food is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.9 syllables.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 A-A- pineA · good · diuineA · food
- 2 A-A- kindA · mortalitie · mindA · die
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Perhaps for want of food the soule may pine; | 10 | ˘/········ |
| But that were strange, sith all things bad and good, | 10 | ·········· |
| Sith all God's creature's mortall and diuine, | 9 | ···/˘/˘·· |
| Sith God Himselfe, is her eternall food. | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| Bodies are fed with things of mortall kind, | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| And so are subiect to mortalitie; | 10 | ·········· |
| But Truth which is eternall, feeds the mind; | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
| The Tree of life, which will not let her die. | 10 | ·········· |
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.