{
 "id": "wilfred-owen/the-send-off",
 "title": "The Send-Off",
 "poet": "Wilfred Owen",
 "poet_slug": "wilfred-owen",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 8,
 "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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the siding-shed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lined the train with faces grimly gay.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As men’s are, dead.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stood staring hard,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Winked to the guard.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They were not ours:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We never heard to which front these were sent.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Nor there if they yet mock what women meant",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who gave them flowers.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Shall they return to beatings of great bells",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In wild trainloads?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May creep back, silent, to still village wells",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Up half-known roads.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}