Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MEDITATIONS IN TIME OF CIVIL WAR: 6. THE STARE'S NEST, by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS


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MEDITATIONS IN TIME OF CIVIL WAR: 6. THE STARE'S NEST, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The bees build in the crevices
Alternate Author Name(s): Yeats, W. B.
Subject(s): Ireland - Rebellions


The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the state.
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no cleat fact to be discerned:
Come build in he empty house of the stare.
A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More Substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.





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