The poem’s speaker is anonymous and impersonal. Like a third-person narrator in a novel or short story, the speaker of Longfellow’s poem has a broad, encompassing awareness. Not only do they describe the actions of the traveler in a distanced and objective way, but they also describe various processes of the natural world with similar objectivity. Note, for example, their description in the second stanza of how the waves erase the traveler’s footsteps. There are no human actors involved in this scene, and yet the speaker still “sees” this moment and draws our attention to its significance. Though the speaker does account for human and nonhuman goings-on, they have limited omniscience, which is to say that they don’t know everything. For example, they don’t have access to the traveler’s inner experience, and hence they don’t relate anything about what the traveler thinks or feels. The speaker’s distanced and impersonal quality helps establish the poem’s grave and somber tone. The speaker amplifies this quality through their dignified and reserved poetic sensibility. They speak in a calm and measured fashion, subtly using language to evoke the constant lapping of the tides.

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