The Sentry
THE SENTRY by WILFRED OWEN
We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
And gave us hell; for shell on frantic shell
Lit full on top, but never quite burst through.
Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime,
Kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour,
And choked the steps too thick with clay to climb.
What murk of air remained stank old, and sour
With fumes from whizz-bangs, and the smell of men
Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den,
If not their corpses...
There we herded from the blast
Of whizz-bangs; but one found our door at last,---
Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles,
And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping
And sploshing in the flood, deluging muck,
The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles
Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.
We dredged it up, for dead, until he whined,
'O sir---my eyes,---I'm blind,---I'm blind,---I'm blind.'
Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids
And said if he could see the least blurred light
He was not blind; in time they'd get all right
'I can't,' he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids',
Watch my dreams still,---yet I forgot him there
In posting Next for duty, and sending a scout
To beg a stretcher somewhere, and flound' ring about
To other posts under the shrieking air.
Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,
And one who would have drowned himself for good,---
I try not to remember these things now.
Let Dread hark back for one word only: how,
Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps,
And the wild chattering of his shivered teeth,
Renewed most horribly whenever crumps
Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath,---
Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout
'I see your lights!'---But ours had long gone out.
Title |
The Sentry
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Author |
Owen, Wilfred (1893-1918)
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Item date |
1983
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Content | |
Copyright |
The Estate of Wilfred Owen. The Complete Poems and Fragments of Wilfred Owen edited by Jon Stallworthy first published by Chatto & Windus, 1983. Preliminaries, introductory, editorial matter, manuscripts and fragments omitted.
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Digital repository | |
Repository name |
ProQuest
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Repository address URL | |
First line |
We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
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Publication source |
The Complete Poems and Fragments of Wilfred Owen
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Publication editor |
Stallworthy, Jon
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Publishers |
Chatto & Windus
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Publication place |
London
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Collection
Citation
“The Sentry,” by Owen, Wilfred (1893-1918). The Estate of Wilfred Owen. The Complete Poems and Fragments of Wilfred Owen edited by Jon Stallworthy first published by Chatto & Windus, 1983. Preliminaries, introductory, editorial matter, manuscripts and fragments omitted. via First World War Poetry Digital Archive, accessed May 18, 2024, http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/3360.
Permitted Use
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