Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen (b. 1893 d. 1918)
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 gas-shells dropping softly 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 flound’ring 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.
Commentary
The title, borrowed from a line by the Roman poet Horace, “the glorious and the decent way of dying is for one’s country,” as translated from Latin by James Michie, clashes with the harsh first line of Wilfred Owen’s poem: “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks.” We know right away that we’re not in glory territory. As Owen tells it, soldiers curse, “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags.” He doesn’t stint on poetic techniques like rhyme and near-rhyme “sacks,” “hags” and then “backs,” but his poem presents a very different view of war, the trench warfare and poison gas of World War I. Brutal words for men in agony—one who does not get his gas mask on dies “guttering, choking, drowning.”
The poet invites us, his readers, “to pace behind the wagon that we flung him in.” In other words, Look! Warfare is “obscene.” The poem concludes by calling its own title “The old Lie.” Wilfred Owen was killed in World War I but lived long enough to write this and other poems that allow us to see through his eyes, even today, more than a century later, as the United States wages war against Iran.
Marion Brown‘s two poetry collections, TASTED and THE MORNING AFTER SUMMER, were published by Finishing Line Press. She lives in Yonkers. Her website is marionbrownpoet.com. This is her first poetry commentary to be published in The Ledger. Marion has done readings of her work at The Hudson Valley Writers Center. Learn more about the Hudson Valley Writers center here
