“Coole” actually refers to a few different places in Ireland; this poem is most likely set in Coole Park, a nature reserve and area of natural beauty in County Galway. The park contains a turlough, or rare type of lake that rises and disappears with the changing seasons. The speaker of the poem sits by this lake in the autumn season, and the sensory details of the setting are established in the first stanza: “The trees are in their autumn beauty, / The woodland paths are dry” (Lines 1-2), meaning that the trees are beginning to show their autumn colours, but the landscape is still dry from the summer heat. The poem takes place at twilight, a moment at the cusp of night and day. The setting is also deeply familiar to the speaker, having been visited in their youth.