{
 "id": "wilfred-owen/insensibility",
 "title": "Insensibility",
 "poet": "Wilfred Owen",
 "poet_slug": "wilfred-owen",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 9,
 "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": 59,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 6,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [
  {
   "ordinal": "I",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    0,
    1
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "II",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    1,
    2
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "III",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    2,
    3
   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "IV",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
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   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "V",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
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   ]
  },
  {
   "ordinal": "VI",
   "title": null,
   "stanza_range": [
    5,
    6
   ]
  }
 ],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Happy are men who yet before they are killed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can let their veins run cold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whom no compassion fleers",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or makes their feet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The front line withers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But they are troops who fade, not flowers",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For poets’ tearful fooling:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Men, gaps for filling",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Losses who might have fought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Longer; but no one bothers.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And some cease feeling",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even themselves or for themselves.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dullness best solves",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The tease and doubt of shelling,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Chance’s strange arithmetic",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They keep no check on Armies’ decimation.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Happy are these who lose imagination:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They have enough to carry with ammunition.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their spirit drags no pack.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Having seen all things red,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their eyes are rid",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And terror’s first constriction over,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their hearts remain small drawn.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now long since ironed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Happy the soldier home, with not a notion",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And many sighs are drained.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His days are worth forgetting more than not.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He sings along the march",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The long, forlorn, relentless trend",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From larger day to huger night.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We wise, who with a thought besmirch",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blood over all our soul,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How should we see our task",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But through his blunt and lashless eyes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alive, he is not vital overmuch;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dying, not mortal overmuch;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor sad, nor proud,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor curious at all.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He cannot tell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Old men’s placidity from his.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That they should be as stones.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wretched are they, and mean",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With paucity that never was simplicity.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By choice they made themselves immune",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To pity and whatever mourns in man",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before the last sea and the hapless stars;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whatever shares",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The eternal reciprocity of tears.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}