The Speaker

The unnamed speaker is the narrator and main character of the poem. When the poem begins, the speaker is an adult, however they immediately begin recalling a memory from their childhood. As a result, we see the speaker in their childhood years throughout the majority of the poem. They do not provide any real physical description of themselves besides the clothes they wore during their journey, which they refer to as a “disguise of cast-off weeds” and a “motley accoutrement” (9, 12). They also carry with them a nutting-crook and a large wallet slung over their shoulder. The speaker does not physically characterize themselves at all in the present.

The speaker is a lover of nature, both in their past that they recall and in the present scene of recollection. They are awestruck by the beauty of the unvisited bower, reveling in it like a paradise. However, as a...