Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
This is probably the most famous WWI poem, and one of the most famous war poems ever written. After reading it just once makes it easy to see why.
The Latin phrase that ends this poem translates into English as, "it is sweet and proper to die for one's country". The phrase is by Horace, an ancient Roman poet.
Even with the rhyme scheme, this poem manages to clearly show the brutality of war. There is no romanticizing here--the first stanza describes men who are exhausted, disabled, bloodied, and shell-shocked.
In the second stanza, the poet introduces the reader to one of the things WWI is best known for: mustard gas. We receive a description of these same men suddenly energized--"an ecstasy of fumbling"--except for one man.
We watch with the speaker as he spends the rest of the poem dying. Owen does not spare us from the horrific pain the dying man went through. But in the last stanza, as if knowing most readers will want to turn away, Owen directly addresses us:
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
If we could hear, the speaker tells us, the agony of this man's death, we would never romanticize war, never tell children they should be proud to die for their country.
The horrors of WWI, The War to End All Wars, and the poetry of Wilfred Owen did not, of course, keep anyone safe from war. And Owen's biography--at least to me--adds to the absolute sadness: he was killed in action just one week (or one day, depending on the source) before Armistice.
From his biography on The Poetry Foundation's web site: "Wilfred Owen, who wrote some of the best British poetry on World War I, composed nearly all of his poems in slightly over a year, from August 1917 to September 1918. In November 1918 he was killed in action at the age of 25, one week before the Armistice. Only five poems were published in his lifetime . . .".
A recent book by Michael Korda is a group biography of Owen and other poets who served in WWI. Published in 2024, Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets, is a must-read for anyone interested in history or poetry or (like me) both.
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