The speaker of the poem, is a sad, melancholy and downcast king. While reading the poem we can see that the king won the war that his kingdom fought against another kingdom, but the king feels extremely guilty and disappointed even in the face of victory. Because the war caused great misery to the people of his kingdom, people do not have food, clothes and cannot even cremate their dead. This leaves the king in an extremely depressed, melancholy and even confused and helpless state as he cannot find the strength to think about how to solve these problems, but he wants to lament and put the sadness out.