{
 "id": "wilfred-owen/the-show",
 "title": "The Show",
 "poet": "Wilfred Owen",
 "poet_slug": "wilfred-owen",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 3,
 "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": 29,
  "n_stanzas": 10,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 61,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "My soul looked down from a vague height with Death,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As unremembering how I rose or why,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Round myriad warts that might be little hills.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "From gloom’s last dregs these long-strung creatures crept,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "(And smell came up from those foul openings",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "On dithering feet upgathered, more and more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Brown strings towards strings of gray, with bristling spines,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All migrants from green fields, intent on mire.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}