The speaker wakes at four in the morning, in the dark hours when worries press hardest, and feels like they are living someone else's day. The mind drifts through scattered images: a forest, a clearing, a dead body with a fly hovering over it. The fly is called an "imp," which gives death a strange, almost mocking touch. Then comes a bleak line: it is midsummer, but in "the country of grief," where the season offers no warmth.
The middle of the poem is about small exchanges. Dinner for dinner, a tune for a glass, "sorry" for a loss. These trades suggest that grief makes everything feel like a transaction, and that words of sympathy are a thin payment for what has been taken. The ending shifts to a dry, almost darkly funny note. Parliament is "against" the scandal of nature, which, if pushed too far, will simply go to bed. The mood is weary, numb, and quietly ironic.