Speaker

As with most poems, the principal character is the speaker. The speaker is an unnamed young man. We learn relatively little about him by self-description. Instead, the speaker's character becomes clear through the words he chooses.

He is an intelligent, presumably classically educated, young man, with a wide vocabulary of references to literary works and to history. He is also deeply passionate, profoundly concerned with sex. He is self-interested, focused on his own pleasure, but not to the exclusion of his partner's. He is also very dismissive of social norms, choosing to embrace his own moral code.

Celia

Celia is the woman the speaker is in love with. They are not married, but seem to be lovers, or at least aspiring ones. Nothing about Celia's character is revealed in the poem, though we get some description of her physical appearance: she has pale skin and gold hair. The...