The Wine
I cannot die, who drank delightFrom the cup of the crescent moon,And hungrily as men eat bread,Loved the scented nights of June.
The rest may die--but is there notSome shining strange escape for meWho sought in Beauty the bright wineOf immortality?
Words in this poem
- drank n.
- Wild oats, or darnel grass. See Drake a plant. [Cf. 3d Drake.]
- hungrily adv.
- In a hungry manner; voraciously. [From Hunger.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Wine is in the public domain. This text is taken from Flame and Shadow, Project Gutenberg ebook #591; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sara Teasdale, The Wine, in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/the-wine.html, id L16989.
Form and metre
The Wine is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%). 89% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 50% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 -A-A delight · moonA · bread · juneA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I cannot die, who drank delight | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| From the cup of the crescent moon, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And hungrily as men eat bread, | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| Loved the scented nights of June. | 8 | ·˘·/˘··· |
| The rest may die--but is there not | 8 | ········ |
| Some shining strange escape for me | 8 | ·/˘·˘/·· |
| Who sought in Beauty the bright wine | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Of immortality? | 6 | ··˘/˘˘ |
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.