An unidentified first-person speaker who watches the titular boys moving through life. The narrator carefully catalogs the boys' destructive actions and notes how they spoil resources to bring coldness to a warm season. In the final stanza, this singular voice identifies as an older man akin to the youths' fathers, acknowledging a shared lineage of creation and decay.

A group of energetic youths who barrel through life acting as agents of both creation and decay. Initially observed from a distance, they later adopt a first-person plural voice to boast of their physical control over the natural world. They carry the light and warmth of summer inside them even as they sour honey, freeze soils, and choke deserts with ocean tides.

A male personification of the winter season. He pulls black-tongued bells to signal the arrival of darkness and cold weather. His punctual arrival directly challenges the erratic heat and vitality of the summer youths.

A female personification of the nocturnal cycle. She actively blows into the world alongside winter, creating a physical presence for the descending darkness. She works in tandem with the cold to establish the darker half of the earth's natural cycle.