The speaker is caught between love and helplessness. Someone close to them, a "she," keeps raising things the speaker doesn't see as pretences, and the speaker struggles to follow her through what they call "deep snake-like trenches." She doesn't value herself, and every attempt to change her mind fails. The speaker even imagines that if such pain came again, they would understand that tears are not the same as real hurt.
The third stanza widens out. The speaker suggests that people can see their problems but won't change how they look at them: we "question the eye" yet never "change the vision." The closing couplet pulls this together with a hopeful but sad image of reaching the stars with no rocket, only "broken hearts." The mood is tender, weary and quietly reflective, with a feeling that pain might be the only fuel people have for hope.