Poetry Train Monday - 25 - Dulce Et Decorum Est

As someone born on Remembrance Day, I have carried the 'laying down of arms' to heart all of my life. Inside of me there's a warrior spirit, ready to stand and protect, to do the hardest of duties. But guiding my tongue is the spirit of the peace dove. I seek to diffuse, to calm, to find that win-win.


For today's Poetry Monday, I want to share this convention-breaking poem written by a World War I soldier. Wilfred Owen is part of a select group known as war poets. Already writing sophisticated poetry before he served, Owen continued to write throughout the war.

"He threw himself into combat, often recklessly. While his unit was crossing a canal near the village of Ors in pursuit of the retreating German forces, Owen was shot and killed by the water's edge. He was only 25 - and the war was just seven days from its end." (British Library, Online Gallery, English Literature)



The title translates to 'It is sweet and right'



Dulce Et Decorum Est









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.


Wilfred Owen - 1917


"Dulce et decorum est" - "It is sweet and right"
"Pro patria mori" - "To die for the homeland"


Painting - "Gassed", 1919 by John Singer Sargent

Photograph of Wilfred Owen's Manchester Regiment in No Man's Land