Foodless

c. 1807, William Blake, Vala, or The Four Zoas in Blake: Complete Poems, edited by W. H. Stevenson, Routledge, 3rd edition, 2007, p. 321, lines 187-8, Why does the raven cry aloud & no eye pities her? / Why fall the sparrow & the robin in the foodless winter?

You have spent your last eighty centimes on half a litre of milk, and are boiling it over the spirit lamp. While it boils a bug runs down your forearm; you give the bug a flick with your nail, and it falls, plop! straight into the milk. There is nothing for it but to throw the milk away and go foodless.

In 1938-1939, while I may have been no better off in time than in 1954, I should at least have had the use of a Pullman car in which to obtain a meal, instead of having to spend over 2½ hr. on a foodless and drinkless journey of no more than 77½ miles.