Reading "Reformed" is a bit like piecing together a story from scraps of overheard conversation. The poem gives us a man who has done terrible harm, and the opening image is the most disturbing: "a doll with a tongue," something that looks like a toy but can speak, on which he inflicted "all violence imaginable." The doll seems to stand in for a person, perhaps a child, though the poem never says so outright.
Then the focus shifts to a courtroom, where his daughter speaks for the first time to save him. The title makes us wonder what "reformed" really means, and whether he has changed or is only claiming to have. He says he is "ruined by what he sees now," yet the poem points out he has "nothing to eat," which makes his complaint sound small and self-pitying.
The last lines drift toward the news, where the hope that things "may prove little" is oddly quiet. The mood is cold and uneasy, withholding judgment but leaving us with doubt.