The speaker begins with a grand, almost prayerful cry to "an infinity of papers," asking that pieces of him be handed out to the surgeon, to soldiers, to the town. It sounds like a wish to be useful, or to be used up, and yet he admits that in the town he seems "a dull heavy man." There's a gap between how large his inner life feels and how plain he looks from outside.
Then the tone drops sharply into the everyday: he wanted some cabbage, sent for it, and got it. That small, satisfied line feels almost comic after the big opening, and it suggests a mind that moves easily between the cosmic and the humble. The ending turns quieter and stranger. He marvels that he is "already in the book / of rain and night," as if he has been written into something larger and darker than any town record. The mood is wry, tender, and a little dreamy, with a shadow of mortality underneath.