{
 "id": "wilfred-owen/strange-meeting",
 "title": "Strange Meeting",
 "poet": "Wilfred Owen",
 "poet_slug": "wilfred-owen",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "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",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 43,
    "was": "Let us sleep now⁠ ⁠…”2",
    "now": "Let us sleep now⁠ ⁠…”",
    "why": "A Standard Ebooks endnote marker (<a epub:type=\"noteref\">) carried into the text by extraction; not present on the printed page.",
    "checked_against": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1034",
    "date": "2026-08-12"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 43,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 57,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "It seemed that out of the battle I escaped",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a thousand fears that vision’s face was grained;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Strange, friend,” I said. “Here is no cause to mourn.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“None,” said the other, “Save the undone years,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was my life also; I went hunting wild",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After the wildest beauty in the world,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But mocks the steady running of the hour,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For by my glee might many men have laughed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And of my weeping something has been left,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pity of war, the pity war distilled.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now men will go content with what we spoiled.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Courage was mine, and I had mystery;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To miss the march of this retreating world",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into vain citadels that are not walled.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I would have poured my spirit without stint",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am the enemy you killed, my friend.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let us sleep now⁠ ⁠…”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}