The speaker of this poem is a man looking back on his days of youth spent in the countryside. He's recalling a memory and how it made him feel and what it meant to him. Though the speaker has all the knowledge and insight that years of experience will give a person, he still honors the naïve hope, excitement, and disappointment of the young man. Never does he look back and say, "Man I was such a dumb kid then, I'm so much wiser now." It's a pretty non-judgmental and nostalgic look back at an important event from the past.