The speaker is putting his life in order, and the poem shows how thin that order is. His papers are sorted, the office freshly whitewashed, the windows clean. Everything looks respectable. Yet he says "I am more than I am," a line that sounds like confidence but also like a man inflating himself, or insisting on a self he can't quite find. It's only "in my absence" that the storm is kind to him, which suggests he feels safest when he isn't really there.
The title points to a modest, comfortable, status-conscious life, and the request to "tell me how hard gold is / that I may touch it" reads as a longing for wealth or solidity, something real to hold. But the ending undercuts it. His wife says nothing, and the silence is compared to "melancholy as the best clock," steady and measured, ticking away. The mood is cool and uneasy: neat surfaces, with loneliness and quiet dissatisfaction underneath.