The Speaker
Traditional love poetry usually features a speaker who is in love with someone else. Clare defies this expectation by writing a poem that is about love itself, rather than a particular experience of love. This different focus makes the speaker a less important figure in the poem. First-person pronouns only appear in the first and last stanzas of the poem, when the speaker states, “I love the fond,/The faithful, young and true.” His declaration of love is directed not at his own beloved, but rather at true lovers in general. Ironically, in a poem about love, the speaker himself seems distant from the emotion: rather than feeling it himself, he praises it in others.
The Fond, the Faithful, and the True
In the last two lines of the of the first and last stanzas, the speaker professes his love for “the fond, the faithful, and the true.” These adjectives connote true lovers who are honest, faithful, and willing to give in to sentiment. Because the poem praises love, these lovers are its heroes.
