The Speaker

The Speaker is the narrator and main character of the poem. As with most of Wordsworth’s speakers, their identity is unspecified and yet closely aligns with Wordsworth himself. The speaker does not provide any physical description of themselves. They imply that they are still relatively young, as the poem takes place five years after their first visit to the River Wye, at which time they still viewed the world with a youthful energy. They contrast this past perspective with their present perspective in order to show how they have matured emotionally and spiritually in terms of their relationship with nature.

The speaker characterizes themselves as a lover of nature. Even during their youth they found themselves wrapped in nature’s ecstasies. In the present, they view nature as a source of spiritual sustenance. They look back fondly on their experiences in nature and in doing so...