The narrator
“Autumn” lacks any named characters, and the narrator never even refers to himself. That absence of a human presence is part of the point of the poem—to experience the awe-inspiring power of the landscape, the human observer has to forget himself. Nevertheless, we learn about the narrator through how he describes the landscape. We see him to be exceptionally attentive to the subtleties of the world in front of him. We also know that his reference points are rooted in the domestic world, because he compares what he sees outside to items like a boiling pot and “overbaked bread.”
The observers
Generally, “Autumn” is laser-focused on the landscape itself, rather than the people who fill it. However, in the third stanza, Clare does briefly shift into the first person plural, writing “And the rivers we’re eying.” In “Autumn,” the human role is to look out at the world.
