The speaker turns inward, following remembered paths that someone once opened in her heart. Those roads are “dear and dim”—loved, but no longer fully clear. Inside, she builds a fragile shelter out of broken memories of him, and the word “broken” suggests loss and the patient work of preserving what remains.
The outside world offers something grander: marble halls and the company of friends near and far. Yet she refuses that solid, public comfort. The wavering, unstable walls of her heart, where shattered treasures are kept, feel more precious than anything others might give her. The mood is quiet, private, and elegiac—not a confident grief, but a tender one. She chooses the imperfect inward place where love and loss are stored over any outward consolation, as if the very brokenness of the memories makes them sacred.