The speaker describes home in careful, almost grudging terms. It isn't a prison, they say, only a workhouse, a place where you stay because there is labor to be done rather than because you've been punished. That small correction sounds like someone trying to talk themselves into a milder view of their situation.
The second stanza is more puzzling. The door "met with the street," a line that suggests a threshold between inside and outside, but the speaker adds that this isn't "for love." Whatever passes through that door, it seems to be duty or necessity, not desire.
Then the mood shifts. The speaker admits they like the place empty, and that they "spent the night in a book." Reading becomes the real escape, a way of leaving without ever using the door. The tone is dry, quiet, and a little lonely, but there is also relief in it. Solitude and books make the workhouse bearable, maybe even welcome.