The speaker is an elderly person, most likely a man, reaching the twilight years of life and looking backwards at the dichotomy of his existence. The reference to losing his soul to fairyland sixty years past suggests the speaker is in his mid-late seventies, if he first became aware of this reality in young adulthood. The speaker examines a life lived with two identities: an ordinary, mundane existence lived out “in the world of men” (Line 4), and another that is “away with the fairies,” or caught up in a world of magic and imagination. Even as the speaker faced heartbreak and potential abuse in this world, they still long to return to it. Coming to the end of their life, the speaker wishes they had never ruptured themselves in half and instead lived a complete if un-extraordinary life like those around him.