Lines 1-6 set the scene of the poem and begin the dialogue that continues through line 27.
The poem is framed as a reminiscence. The setting is an unspecified location at "one summer's end." There are three characters:
- The speaker, who turns out to be a male poet very much like Yeats;
- A "you" who turns out to be the woman he loves;
- And her "close friend," a "beautiful mild woman."
The speaker recalls the three of them sitting around and "talk[ing] of poetry," although the speaker seems to do most of the talking on this subject. He argues that poetry takes many hours of hard work, yet must seem utterly spontaneous:
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Here, "stitching and unstitching" is a metaphor for the work of poetry: the laborious drafting, erasing, revising, etc. that poets have to do in order to make their lines sound smooth and natural. (As if to prove the point, Yeats revised some of the lines in this poem after its original publication!)
These opening lines also establish the poem's form. Its meter is iambic pentameter, meaning that its lines typically contain five iambs (metrical feet consisting of an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable). Basically, the lines follow a "da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM" rhythm. But this is only a basic pattern with many variations; for example, line 3 is "perfect" iambic pentameter, while lines 1-2 aren't:
We sat | toge- | ther at | one sum- | mer’s end,
That beaut- | iful | mild wo- | man, your | close friend,
And you | and I, | and talked | of po- | etry.
These pentameter lines form rhymed couplets, which, in turn, stack up into larger stanza units. Most of the rhymes in the poem are exact, as in these opening lines ('end"/"friend," etc.), but others are slant rhymes. Couplets seem to fit the poem's subject (romance, couples, etc.), but the handful of less-than-"perfect" rhymes may hint that the poem is about failed or flawed romance.