The speaker begins in a thoroughly low state—tired, angry, and so fed up that no living person could please him. He even toys with a self-mocking epitaph: “Here lies all that no one loved of him / And that loved no one.” It’s a moment of bleak humor, but it quickly passes. He feels like a river at dusk, cold and untouched by sunlight, its surface scratched by cross breezes.
Then, without forcing it, a sliver of his heart drifts out toward a tree in a misty, dim valley. He’s careful to say this isn’t a mournful return, like a lapwing crying for something lost. It’s more like a dove flying straight home, sure of where it belongs. In that simple image, the whole mood shifts. The bitterness doesn’t vanish, but it’s set aside as he finds rest in the presence of beauty—something still alive in him, quietly anchored in the natural world.