WILLIAM BUTLER YEASTS’S THE STARE’S NEST BY MY WINDOW

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 stare.

We are closed in, and the key is turned

On our uncertainty; some where

A man is killed, or a house burned,

Yet no clear fact to be discerned:

Come build in the 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.