I Had Been Hungry All the Years-
I Had Been Hungry All the Years- - meaning Summary
Hunger Transformed by Abundance
The poem describes a speaker who, after long deprivation, suddenly encounters abundance and is unsettled by it. The new plenty—bread and wine—feels alien and even makes the speaker ill, as if transplanted to an unfamiliar place. By the end the speaker recognizes that hunger had become a way of being and that true entry into abundance removes that hunger and its identity.
Read Complete AnalysesI had been hungry all the years- My noon had come, to dine- I, trembling, drew the table near And touched the curious wine. ‘T was this on tables I had seen When turning, hungry, lone, I looked in windows, for the wealth I could not hope to own. I did not know the ample bread, ‘T was so unlike the crumb The birds and I had often shared In Nature’s dining-room. The plenty hurt me, ‘t was so new,– Myself felt ill and odd, As berry of a mountain bush Transplanted to the road. Nor was I hungry; so I found That hunger was a way Of persons outside windows, The entering takes away.
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