The speaker starts with a playful, slightly unsettling thought: what if the stars were just white cardboard hung on fishing line, hollow but still shining? Their glow doesn't depend on what anyone on earth thinks, and the speaker's opinions don't count for much either.
Then the poem turns to an invitation. Someone could climb up and sit among the stars, which are imagined as proud, independent "lords," and the speaker says there might be comfort in that. But the final stanza chooses something humbler. The speaker would rather be one of the stars' dim followers, a natural spirit without any fancy trimmings, resting in morning mist in the fields far below. The mood is wistful and gently ironic. Grandeur may be fake, the speaker suggests, while a quiet, ordinary place on the ground feels honest and peaceful. The ending settles into contentment rather than longing.