Point of View

The poem is written from a first-person present tense point of view. However, the poem primarily uses third-person and past tense to narrate. The poem thus takes on the format of someone telling a story about events that happened to someone else and in the past.

Like most poems, “The Unfortunate Lover” is told from the perspective of an unnamed speaker. This character is the audience’s window into the world of the poem and offers their perspective on events. However, unlike most poems, the narrator of “The Unfortunate Lover” is not the protagonist of the poem’s events. Instead, the poem’s main character is the titular “unfortunate lover.” The lover does not tell his story himself, but has it told for him by the unnamed speaker.

The relationship between the speaker and the lover is never clarified in the poem. The speaker does...