Because his attention remains outwardly focused for the poem’s duration, the speaker doesn’t reveal much about himself. We don’t know his age or his occupation. Technically, we also don’t know his gender. However, given that Byron wrote the poem in the early 1800s, and recalling that many critics interpret the speaker as a stand-in for Byron himself, we can assume the speaker is male. Likewise, we can assume that the speaker is well educated. We can make this assumption based on the speaker’s evident preoccupation with philosophical abstraction. Although the speaker is clearly entranced by the woman’s physical attractiveness, her beauty arguably takes a backseat to his intellectual gymnastics. This may seem a strange claim to make, especially since all three of the poem’s stanzas are focused on the woman’s face. But consider the complex language the speaker uses to describe the woman’s beauty. It isn’t merely the attraction that thrills him—it’s also the way her beauty relates to aesthetic principles of harmony. His excitement also derives from the speculative thought that her beauty is a physical manifestation of her virtuous character. Hence, the speaker’s philosophical preoccupations are equally if not more central than the woman’s beauty.

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