{
 "id": "wilfred-owen/futility",
 "title": "Futility",
 "poet": "Wilfred Owen",
 "poet_slug": "wilfred-owen",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 17,
 "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": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 42,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Move him into the sun⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gently its touch awoke him once,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At home, whispering of fields unsown.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Always it woke him, even in France,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Until this morning and this snow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If anything might rouse him now",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The kind old sun will know.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Think how it wakes the seeds⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Full-nerved⁠—still warm⁠—too hard to stir?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was it for this the clay grew tall?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To break earth’s sleep at all?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}