Context

• Seamus Heaney was Northern Irish, he died in 2013.
• This poem was published in 1966 at the start of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland: a period of deep unrest and violence between those who wanted to remain part of the UK and those who wanted to become part of Ireland.
• The first eight letters of the title spell ‘Stormont’: this is the name of Northern Ireland’s parliament.
• The poem might be a metaphor for the political storm that was building in the country at the time.