The speaker arrives in the countryside to hunt, but the poem quickly suggests that something is off. The gun is compared to a painted name on a picture, which makes it feel oddly flat and ornamental, as if the weapon were a label stuck onto the scene rather than a tool the speaker really commands. It hints at a person who has the role of hunter without fully belonging in it.
Then the attention shifts to a distant wood, and the speaker admits it "troubles me without reason." That admission is the heart of the poem. The title, "Hylophobia," names a fear of forests, and the poem seems to show that fear in its earliest, vaguest form: no clear threat, just unease. The mood is quiet, uncertain, and a little eerie. The speaker came to take control of the landscape, yet the faraway trees seem to hold the power, unsettling the hunter before the hunt has even begun.