This type of poetry persona is most often associated with the sonnets of William Shakespeare and the Italian poet, Petrarch. The speaker in the sonnet sequences of these two writers often yearns for the love of an ideal person. For Shakespeare's personae, this person was at times a young man and sometimes an older woman. For Petrarch's persona, it was a young woman named Laura whom the poet saw during a church service. While praising the beauty of the ideal person, the persona often reveals more about their own mental state.
This persona occurs very often in poetry of the Romantic period (late 19th century). This persona can be found in the long poems of William Wordsworth such as "Tintern Abbey" and "The Prelude." However, it's also witnessed in John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi also typifies this persona in his work. The lyrical "I" persona of the Romantic period often reflects upon the transience of the natural world.
The poetry persona of the alienated figure is best typified by two poems: T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Ezra Pound's "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley." The speakers in both of these early 20th century poems bemoan the industrialized modern age. They feel alienated from their physical environment and struggle to forge connections with those around them. The personae themselves are used to criticize the milieu of the Western world after World War II.
This persona often reflects the post-industrialized, or digital age. It's characterized by a multiplicity of concerns and voices all housed within a first person speaker. One representative poet who employs this persona is the American poet John Ashbery. His personae may be first person, but they speak in different registers from purely lyrical to colloquial. Poems of this type resemble a collage of multiple personae, which sometimes contradict one another.