The speaker is an adult reflecting on his boyhood experiences in the Welsh countryside. As a child, he feels completely unified with nature, perceiving the farm as an eternal paradise where he wanders as a prince among the apple orchards. He exhibits a joyful unawareness of the future, completely absorbed in the sounds of owls, nightjars, and holy streams.

Time functions as a personified, inflexible male figure who controls the progression of the speaker's life. Initially, time indulges the boy by allowing him to play and flourish in his rural setting. Ultimately, time reasserts its strict laws and leads the child out of his innocent grace into the realities of adulthood.

Ann is the speaker's aunt and a tenant at Fern Hill located near the village of Llangynog. She performs most of the daily manual labor required to maintain the farm. By keeping pigs, cows, and chickens, she earns a modest living selling butter.

Jack is the speaker's uncle who resides at Fern Hill during the 1920s. He lives as a tenant farmer in Carmarthenshire. He eventually leaves the property when the lease ends.