The speaker remembers a childhood game of riding a toy horse, a stick with a rubber head, in a yard of red brick and growing grass. At the time, nothing seemed worth noticing. The good weather was simply there, and the stick was a horse named Silver, a name the child used before understanding it. The imagination was total, and no one stopped to question it.
The feeling is gentle nostalgia, tinged with quiet wisdom. The middle stanza says it plainly: it takes time to understand what time does to people and things. Only now can the speaker see what those afternoons meant. Small details, like lizards watching the "journeys" and a tree house serving as a jail, show how a child turns ordinary corners into a whole world. The short last stanza jumps ahead, to reading Tagore years later, while the image of toy soldiers on sand lingers. The mood is warm, wistful and reflective, with a slight ache for something only understood once it is gone.