In this poem, Yeats is elegizing his friend William Robert Gregory, and he recalls several of his other friends and associates who passed away while contemplating Gregory's death.

Yeats recalls his friends and family who are now deceased and contemplates how he wishes that they could come and join him in his supper by a warm fire. He feels contented and comfortable in his home, but this tranquility is marred by Yeats's realization that his once-companions cannot share it with him. He muses on how, when they were all together, his old friends would mix with new friends, and it would pain him if there was discord or indifference between them. However, he bitterly concludes that there cannot now be any possibly of disharmony between the friends that he loves so dear, for, being dead, they only coalesce in his memory.

First, Yeats recalls Lionel Johnson, a well-known British poet, who he claims loved learning more than he loved people. Despite this preference, he states that Johnson was unfailingly courteous to everyone, but Yeats allows that Johnson was an intellectual and a scholar first. He bemoans the fact that Johnson died young, having never reached his true potential. Next, Yeats speaks of John Synge, who was an Irish writer who secluded himself—"set [himself] apart"—in order to devote his time to writing and producing a prolific body of work. He too died young, at the age of thirty-eight.

Next, Yeats recalls George Pollexfen, Yeats's uncle whom the poet was very close to. Pollexfen was renowned as a skilled horseman, and he conveys how, in Pollexfen's youth, he was similar to a well-bred horse: strong and solid. However, he remarks how Pollexfen then grew older, losing his virility and growing thoughtful. Pollexfen is the only companion evoked in these first stanzas who did not die young.

Yeats then likens his recollections of his friends faces to looking through an "old picture-book." He states that, because they have been dead for some time, he has gotten used to thinking about them in this way. However, he has not yet resigned himself to the death of "our perfect man": the eponymous Major Robert Gregory, who was a fighter pilot in World War I. While he died honorably in battle, Yeats mourns the fact that such an adventurous and daring mind was extinguished so soon.

He describes the young man's generous and discerning mind—how he had a love "For all things"—as well as his daring and delightful temperament. Yeats asserts that, had he lived, Gregory would have made beautiful intellectual contributions to the world. Described as "Soldier, scholar, horseman," Gregory is put forth as the apotheosis of the qualities that were expressed individually by the three other men mentioned—synthesized in one.

Ultimately, Yeats resigns himself to the fact that he cannot do due justice to the memory of Gregory, since his "death took all [his] heart for speech." For him, Gregory was the epitome of everything a man ought to be, and he cannot fully reconcile himself to this untimely loss.