The poem begins at a dramatic climax in the speaker's life. For "all the Years" of their life, they've "been hungry": they've never once had quite enough to eat. Now, at long last, their "Noon ha[s] Come—to dine." In other words, it's finally mealtime. With the sun at its zenith overhead, it seems as if this is going to be a literal and figurative high point for the speaker, the culmination of a lifetime of desire.
At first, it sounds as if the speaker can hardly believe their good fortune:
I trembling drew the Table near—
And touched the Curious Wine—
Shaking with nerves, the speaker approaches the "Curious Wine" (that is, the strange, unfamiliar wine) as reverently as if it were a sacred artifact. The delicate /t/ alliteration of "trembling," "Table," and "touched" suggests just how carefully, how unbelievingly, the speaker is moving: all those /t/ sounds hit like the very tips of the speaker's fingers touching that wine, at long last.
In a lot of ways, this first stanza feels like classic Emily Dickinson:
- For instance, it uses Dickinson's favorite meter: common measure, a pattern of alternating iambic tetrameter (lines of four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm: "I had | been hun- | gry all | the years") and iambic trimeter (lines of three iambs: "My Noon | had Come— | to dine—").
- Usually, however, Dickinson would pair this meter with the classic ballad rhyme scheme: ABCB. (In fact, later in the poem, that's the pattern she'll choose.) In this first stanza, however, things are a little more concentrated: rhyming both "Years" and "near," "dine" and "wine," Dickinson uses an ABAB scheme.
- That extra A rhyme makes these first lines feel as focused as the speaker's gaze as they stare at this unfamiliar loaded table.
This intense, dramatic first stanza leaves the speaker (and the reader) in suspense. This person has starved their whole life; now, faced with a feast, what will they do?