Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition

Meditations in Time of Civil War (Author: William Butler Yeats)

part 6

The Stare's Nest by My Window

1. 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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