Character guide

Unknown

major

Also known as Mine, Your, Thou, Me, I

This speaker moves through the poems as a soul in transition, mourning a dead past self while straining toward light glimpsed only now and then. The tension is between solitary sorrow and a widening compassion for the world's suffering, voiced in the recurring cry of Christ and the toilers. That arc from buried heart to consecrated service gives the collection its emotional spine.

Christ

supporting

Also known as Jesus

He appears not as doctrine but as a voice of pity, having probed the darkest depths of grief and known poverty, mockery, and the cross. His tenderness reaches the vermin of the garret, the children of the cellar, and the slaves of wheels, making suffering itself the ground of kinship. That persistent call to rest and peace anchors the poems' meditation on faith, sacrifice, and consolation.

Death

supporting

Also known as thou, thee

Death moves through these poems as both a burial rite for the past self and a liberator whose chains Christ claims to have loosed. The speaker lays a dead heart in its tomb with a lily, refusing to call it back, yet the same figure stands at the grave-city and the sickbed as a quiet promise. This double face—loss and release—shapes the collection's turn from mourning toward consecrated service.

Mother

minor

Also known as Mother—I

The narrator's mother, addressed in a personal and emotional poem.

Chippy

minor

A minor named figure, possibly a pet or acquaintance, mentioned briefly.