Here is a winter landscape broken into pieces, as if the speaker were noting things one at a time while looking out. There is a light snow, a knoll, a tree trunk, a knot in the wood, young trees, marsh water, a body of water called the Sound, clumps of ice, and a sparkling root. The grammar is deliberately scrambled: "a had been fallen" and "the brown most showed" read like snow settling unevenly, covering some things and leaving others bare. The words arrive the way details catch the eye, not as tidy sentences.
The speaker's feeling is quiet attention more than strong emotion. The "etc" is a small, almost offhand moment: there is more to see, but the list is allowed to trail off. The last line, "and so far out," widens the view and leaves a feeling of distance and open space. The mood is hushed, cold, and clear, with a little glitter in the ice. Because the poem's title mentions reading, it may suggest that the landscape is being taken in like a text, in fragments, and left unfinished.