After reading this poem twice, I personally think that the persona is Daedalus, the father of Icarus. He is talking about what the people on the land did when his son has fallen down from the sky. Obviously, Daedalus was sad beyond words can express when he witnessed this tragedy but there was nothing he can do. As he weakly watched the ship sailed away, he also witnessed his son’s hands vanished into the water and his voice silenced by the sea, as stated in Stanza 3. Tennyson wrote “Break, break, break” in the first and the last quartet to signify Daedalus’ broken heart that he could not utter his thoughts knowing Icarus was dead and the poor boy would never come back to him. Tennyson also used rhyme scheme that is a, b, c, b to portray the intense emotion and the expressions “O Sea!”, “O well” and “But O for the touch…” as sighs to define Daedalus’ feelings towards the fall of Icarus.
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