The speaker opens with an exclamation that sounds half proud, half rueful: "How I inform myself!" The title, "Self-starter," suggests someone who feeds their own curiosity, but the poem quickly undercuts that picture. A mind that sets out only to know, the speaker says, "is no mind" at all. Gathering information isn't the same as thinking or understanding.
The last two lines make this feel like a loss. "Sand to the Indies" echoes the old idea of carrying coals to Newcastle: bringing something to a place that already has plenty of it. "The morning star to a fish" is stranger and sadder, since a fish living underwater can never see a star, however bright. Both images are about gifts that go to waste, or knowledge that can't land anywhere.
The mood is wry and a little self-mocking, with a quiet unease underneath. The speaker seems to doubt that endless self-instruction is the same as being awake to the world.