The speaker sits with the morning newspaper and sees it as "raw theater," a stage where human drama plays out daily. Love is tangled up in "a maze of strange straits," and even a peace made "upon good terms" counts as news, which hints at how rare and surprising good outcomes are. The newspaper seems to show a world where trouble is normal and decency is the exception.
The ending turns inward. "Each of us lives / but is ashamed to be" suggests a quiet guilt about simply being alive and well while so much suffering fills the page. The final lines, "resolving to see / pleasure fall," are open to interpretation, but the title helps. An Epicurean values pleasure, so this is a lament for pleasure's loss, or for the way guilt undermines it. The mood is subdued and uneasy: a reader caught between wanting to enjoy life and feeling that the news makes enjoyment hard to justify.