I had been hungry, all the Years (Mini) Analysis

I find this poem interesting to do a mini analysis on because of the use of hunger and abundance of food food as the conceit of the poem.  Hunger symbolizes unfulfilled desires or cravings and abundance of food thus represents over-fulfillment and the loss of appeal to certain desires. What I particularly liked about this poem is its simplicity and how it uses the feeling of hunger and the guilt of gluttony to describe human behavior.

The dining room inside windows vs "nature's dining room"

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Paraphrase the poem

The speaker in the poem reflect upon on how she used to feel relentless hunger and looked for "Wealth" in windows which in turn inflicts pain upon her because she realizes all that "wealth" will never belong to her. She was used to having crumbs while the rich had "ample Bread". Not only do the poor only have crumbs, but the poor share among the poor thus emphasizing how little they have and presents a stark contrast to those who possess not only more, but an abundance of it: "The Birds and I, had often shared In Nature's--Dining Room--". The references to nature and animals portray hunger as a primitive emotion and I found that "sharing in nature's dining room" is ironic because dining rooms usually have tables served with food but nature in essence only serves you what you need and not necessarily what you want. The two lines that come after about a berry bush transplanted to a road I think draws reference to the artificial dining room which serves your desires as opposed to nature serving strictly enough to feed you. The poem then ends in the last stanza about how she was no longer hungry, therefore there was no longer any desire to go outside windows and hunt for fulfillment because "The Entering--takes away" (entering windows and finally receiving what you've wanted all along depletes all the desire you've had in the first place and now you're stuck inside the window with nothing to hunt for.)

What is the setting in time?

The poem begins with "I had been hungry, all the years" but does not specify how many years or how long ago she was looking through windows and hurt by all the wealth she saw. As usual, time in Dickinson's poems are very ambiguous and either defined as "long ago" or a change in "day/noon" and "night''. Perhaps because time is always passing but you never actually consciously register time in accordance to your emotions.