The speaker is a lord looking down from his castle at the peasants who move below him. At first he sounds cold and superior: they "crawl," they know nothing, even their clothes and eyes seem drained of color. He treats them almost as insects.
Then the poem turns. The truly sad people, he says, are not the poor but the courtiers at his own table, who know even less. This is an odd, unsettling claim, and it suggests the speaker sees his household as blind and hollow, perhaps trapped in comfort.
The final stanzas hold the surprise. Only the hunched and the penniless, those with nothing to lose, can dream of shouting "The king is dead!" The speaker seems to understand that real defiance belongs to the powerless. The mood is bleak and tense, with a quiet hint of fear: the one who watches may know he is being wished dead.