{
 "id": "wilfred-owen/wild-with-all-regrets",
 "title": "Wild with All Regrets",
 "poet": "Wilfred Owen",
 "poet_slug": "wilfred-owen",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 21,
 "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": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 55,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "My arms have mutinied against me⁠—brutes!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My back’s been stiff for hours, damned hours.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I can’t read. There: it’s no use. Take your book.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A short life and a merry one, my buck!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We said we’d hate to grow dead old. But now,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not to live old seems awful: not to renew",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My boyhood with my boys, and teach ’em hitting,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shooting and hunting⁠—all the arts of hurting!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—Well, that’s what I learnt. That, and making money.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your fifty years in store seem none too many;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I’ve five minutes. God! For just two years",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To help myself to this good air of yours!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One Spring! Is one too hard to spare? Too long?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spring air would find its own way to my lung,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yes, there’s the orderly. He’ll change the sheets",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I’m lugged out, oh, couldn’t I do that?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here in this coffin of a bed, I’ve thought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’d like to kneel and sweep his floors for ever⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And ask no nights off when the bustle’s over,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For I’d enjoy the dirt; who’s prejudiced",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against a grimed hand when his own’s quite dust⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dear dust⁠—in rooms, on roads, on faces’ tan!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’d love to be a sweep’s boy, black as Town;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A flea would do. If one chap wasn’t bloody,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or went stone-cold, I’d find another body.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Which I shan’t manage now. Unless it’s yours.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall stay in you, friend, for some few hours.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You’ll feel my heavy spirit chill your chest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And climb your throat on sobs, until it’s chased",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On sighs, and wiped from off your lips by wind.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I think on your rich breathing, brother, I’ll be weaned",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To do without what blood remained me from my wound.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}