The speaker is watching a street and finding it so lovely, "pretty as a painted crow," that looking is all they feel they need. The odd image of a crow, a bird usually thought of as dark and plain, suggests a beauty that is a little artificial or surprising, something dressed up.
Then the poem turns on the word "but." The speaker notices an old woman whose body seems "dressed as if / she had been a road," as though a lifetime of being walked on and worn down has become her clothing. The image is striking and a little unsettling: her age and hardship are visible on her like a surface.
The last stanza is harder to pin down. It seems to suggest that the woman, or the sight of her, is a "thin answer" to the complaints the poor make against God. The tone feels uneasy and quietly ironic, caught between appreciation and discomfort, as if the pleasant view cannot hold up once real suffering walks into it.