At first, we see a quiet love scene: a couple comes home at night, closes the door, and stands together in a shadowy room, comforted by familiar walls, floor, and chairs. They are relieved to be away from the noisy, glaring city below, whose bright streets and tired crowds stir a wordless pity in them.
That pity deepens as the speaker looks out at the city’s “million lighted windows.” The lights look like gold squares set into the winter night, but instead of seeming cheerful, they make the speaker aware of all the separate lives behind them—and the stark thought that not one of those lives is wholly joyous, proud, or free. The mood is tender but melancholy: home feels like a refuge, yet it cannot entirely shut out the lonely, unfree world beyond.