Hunger
Father, I cry to thee for breadWith hungred longing, eager prayer;Thou hear'st, and givest me insteadMore hunger and a half-despair.
Lord, how long? My days decline,My youth is lapped in memories old;I need not bread alone, but wine--See, cup and hand to thee I hold!
And yet thou givest: thanks, O Lord,That still my heart with hunger faints!The day will come when at thy boardI sit, forgetting all my plaints.
If rain must come and winds must blow,And I pore long o'er dim-seen chart,Yet, Lord, let not the hunger go,And keep the faintness at my heart.
Words in this poem
- hungred a.
- Hungered; hungry.
- faintness n.
- The state of being faint; loss of strength, or of consciousness, and self-control.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Hunger 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, Hunger, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/hunger.html, id L22414.
Form and metre
Hunger is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
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 ABAB breadA · prayerB · insteadA · despairB
- 2 ABAB declineA · oldB · wineA · holdB
- 3 ABAB lordA · faintsB · boardA · plaintsB
- 4 ABAB blowA · chartB · goA · heartB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Father, I cry to thee for bread | 8 | /˘······ |
| With hungred longing, eager prayer; | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| Thou hear'st, and givest me instead | 8 | ······˘/ |
| More hunger and a half-despair. | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Lord, how long? My days decline, | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| My youth is lapped in memories old; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| I need not bread alone, but wine-- | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| See, cup and hand to thee I hold! | 8 | ········ |
| And yet thou givest: thanks, O Lord, | 8 | ········ |
| That still my heart with hunger faints! | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The day will come when at thy board | 8 | ········ |
| I sit, forgetting all my plaints. | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| If rain must come and winds must blow, | 8 | ········ |
| And I pore long o'er dim-seen chart, | 8 | ········ |
| Yet, Lord, let not the hunger go, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And keep the faintness at my heart. | 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.