{
 "id": "wilfred-owen/arms-and-the-boy",
 "title": "Arms and the Boy",
 "poet": "Wilfred Owen",
 "poet_slug": "wilfred-owen",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 6,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1920,
  "venue": "Poems (1920)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsowenwil00owenrich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1034"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/wilfred-owen_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1034",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100547417"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 12,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 50,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And God will grow no talons at his heels,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}