The poem sketches a lonely girl, or a woman remembering herself as one, in just a few spare lines. Her only company is a secret and her books, and the title, "Life of the mind," gives that isolation a double edge: it sounds like a compliment, but here it reads as a substitute for people. Even the doll, the one companion that might have been a friend, has been sent away. "They say" it lives in the country, a phrase adults use to soften a loss, and the speaker doesn't quite believe it.
The last stanza shifts to a "we" and an odd slip: buying a rose, we mistake it for a bell. The speaker calls it a "strange fancy," as if the mind has wandered somewhere dreamlike. The mood is quiet, wistful and a little eerie. Nothing is explained, so the feeling comes from what's left unsaid: loneliness, secrecy, and a world where things blur together.