This poem has a theme of past beauty on the earth being slowly crowded out by modern life, cities, and civilization. It also has a theme of the temporary sphere that man inhabits; while we are here on earth, what we see is what we are and think. We can't imagine the glory of the earth at previous times: "Only the tract where he sails/ He wots of; only the thoughts,/ Raised by the objects he passes, are his." He tells us that we cannot imagine what Moses thought as "he lay in the night by his flock/On the starlit Arabian waste". The first part of the poem is full of beautiful imagery of the earth as it must have been before, and how we cannot comprehend it.
Then, he seems to bemoan crowding civiliation: "Gone is the calm of its earlier shore./ Border'd by cities and hoarse/With a thousand cries is its stream." He says that we mourn the old beauty, say it is too crowded, the sun is too hot, that peace has fled. He optimistically concludes by indicating that the earth and mankind has, "if not the calm/Of its early mountainous shore,/Yet a solemn peace of its own".
I hope that helps you understand it a bit better. For commentary, criticism, analysis, and Victorian references, see the links below.
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