The speaker of this poem is a person who is in their bedroom, looking out the window at a big tree that grows there. In the first two stanzas of the poem, the speaker talks about how he has to close the window at night, but he never draws the curtain over it because he does not seem to want something that blocks his view of the tree or the tree's view of him. This is literal and figurative: he does not want anything in the way of their connection whether it be spiritual or physical.

He describes the tree in some pretty unusual ways, first as a "Vague dream-head" that lifts out of the ground. By this, Frost’s speaker maybe referring to an actual dream in which the tree is present. Next, the tree is depicted as something which is nearly as "diffuse" as a cloud. The word diffuse could mean a number of things; it could mean, for example, ill-organized or not concentrated. It also might mean spread out—possibly in the sense that there are many trees, as there are many clouds. This tree cannot be expected to be uniquely significant. In these ways, then, the tree is almost characterized as something that has trouble actually holding itself together rather than as something stable and majestic in its strength (as would be more typical). It is more complex and less idealized than other Romantic descriptions of nature might be.

The speaker says that even if all its leaves were "talking aloud" all at once, the tree could not manage to be "profound." He seems, then, to describe nature not as something that can teach us but rather as something that is as flawed and perhaps troubled by life as we are. This may be why the speaker feels drawn to the tree in a realistic way: he sees himself in the human dishevelment of the tree. He has personified the tree into something that makes sense for him, too.

In the second half of the poem, the speaker continues with this idea, saying that he has observed the tree during storms and seen it be "taken and tossed" around in the winds. Further, if the tree has looked in upon him as he sleeps, then it has seen him "taken and swept," feeling that all was lost, too, at least in dreams. There is some sadness in this comparison. Although both the speaker and the tree witness one another, only the speaker has the ability to walk both inside and outside. The speaker may come and go as he wishes but the tree is rooted in place.

Next, the speaker describes how Fate "put [their] heads together," (the speaker's and the tree's) using her imagination because the tree and the speaker are almost like mirrors of one another: the tree is concerned with the literal weather outside while the speaker is concerned with the figurative storms he must endure inside. The speaker has seen himself in the tree, and perhaps this mirroring effect allows some comfort in the tree’s enduring presence.