The speaker describes a small, hard life in a house so full of smoke that it was a nuisance, until the fire was put out. The ending is quietly odd: once the fire is gone, the trouble is gone too, but so is the warmth, and the poem doesn't say whether that counts as relief or loss. "Live hard" suggests struggle, and the cramped, smoky house makes that struggle physical.
The second stanza turns to a book of tales, where the poor "live with great content." The phrase "out of mind" works two ways. The contented poor are forgotten, and they also exist only in the imagination, far from real hardship. The speaker seems to look at that comfortable fiction with some irony, since their own experience doesn't match it.
The title, "Mind over matter," sets up the tension. Can thought make a smoky house bearable? The mood is dry, wry and a little weary, more shrugging than angry, and it leaves the question open.