The Speaker
There is only one character in this poem and he is the speaker. No description is given at all; what is known about this person can only be gathered through context. That context paints a portrait of someone who has lived through life and love long enough to know fully well how high and wonderful it take one and how low and miserable it can make one. The speaker is a person of some experience and certainly old enough to realize that the older one gets, the less easy it is to give oneself over to that experience. The experience and age of this speaker must we fairly well advanced because it takes a great deal of time to realize that the hurt which love can cause is capable of producing a sorrow that is itself often more pleasurable than other genuinely pleasurable experiences. That is the mark of a person not just of experience, but wisdom. That this character wishes to share this wisdom accumulated from the slings and arrows of love gone wrong also creates the context for realizing something we already knew. The speaker is a poet.
