The Sentry

by Wilfred Owen

a poem

published in Poems by Wilfred Owen, page 16
by London: Chatto & Windus, 1920

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Public Domain
A Note About This Work

Note: Wilfred Owen’s poems have been printed in various ways with different edits. We used what we could find book scans for in the 1920 and 1921 versions of the printing by the listed publisher(s): London: Chatto & Windus, 1920; New York: Viking Press, 1921. These versions have entered into the public domain in the USA as per the terms of the URAA/Bern convention and US Copyright Law, explained in the United States Copyright Office "Circular 38b" which discusses copyright protection covering foreign works—which is 95 years of coverage from the original date of publishing.

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The Sentry

Wilfred Owen

October 17, 2022

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thus, we begin...

We’d found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew, And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell Hammered on top, but never quite burst through. Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour, Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb. What murk of air remained stank old, and sour With fumes of 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 splashing 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 him up, for killed, 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 he’d get all right. “I can’t,” he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there In posting next for duty, and sending a scout To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering 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 broken 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 died out.

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Archive Files & Links

  • Archive.org Document

  • Wikisource.org Document

External Video Links

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