{
 "id": "wilfred-owen/the-sentry",
 "title": "The Sentry",
 "poet": "Wilfred Owen",
 "poet_slug": "wilfred-owen",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 11,
 "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": 37,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 57,
  "max_indent": 3
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "We’d found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What murk of air remained stank old, and sour",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who’d lived there years, and left their curse in the den,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If not their corpses.⁠ ⁠…",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There we herded from the blast",
    "indent": 3
   },
   {
    "text": "Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And splashing in the flood, deluging muck⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sentry’s body; then his rifle, handles",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“O sir, my eyes⁠—I’m blind⁠—I’m blind, I’m blind!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And said if he could see the least blurred light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He was not blind; in time he’d get all right.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“I can’t,” he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In posting next for duty, and sending a scout",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To other posts under the shrieking air.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And one who would have drowned himself for good⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I try not to remember these things now.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let dread hark back for one word only: how",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Half-listening to that sentry’s moans and jumps,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the wild chattering of his broken teeth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Renewed most horribly whenever crumps",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“I see your lights!” But ours had long died out.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}