The speaker simply walks, and each stanza turns that act into something heavier. At first it's a stroll through a city that looks shabby up close but delicate from a distance, "ill-painted though pretty as lace." There's affection in that description, a sense of seeing flaws and loving the place anyway.
Then the walking becomes a kind of hoping. The speaker walks "as I wish for the best / part of my life," which suggests a longing for good things still to come, or perhaps for the better years to last. Next comes change: new buildings stand where fields once held "only time," a quiet, strange phrase that makes the old empty land feel full of the past.
The last stanza shifts the mood. The road is "angry," and the speaker walks it "to look after my dead." Judging by that ending, the poem is about memory and grief, and the repeated "I walk" works like steady footsteps carrying the speaker toward duty and loss. The tone is calm on the surface, but sorrow runs underneath.