DULCE ET DECORUM EST
— Wilfred Owen —
8 October 1917

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
"It is sweet and right to die for your country"
__Horace

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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines 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 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.

---

DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country.

---

 

 

---

N.B. The images of the last verse have always stood out in my mind, ever since reading the poem at school, and has affested and informed my view and definition of war and warfare:
War is that action expressed by a willingness and ability to cause death, pain, misery, suffering, subjugation, and the oppression of peoples and individuals, by one society in order to gain dominion over another.
The fundamental truth of war is that it is about death and killing, and arguments regarding the merits of war, of justice, freedom, liberation, or security should be explored in the context of killing and death. To define war only in terms of its benefits to a society is to mislead and disrespect that society and in particular those who do the killing and the dying. There is no 'glory' or 'honour' in driving a bayonet into another's chest, in destroying a moving vehicle, in bombing suburbs from the air, in attacking infrastructure, in killing oneself and others in a crowded place, in killing men, women and children (and are we all not somebodies child?).
In this context glory, it seems to me, is nothing but a salve applied to the conscience of the guilty and conferred upon the dead by those who benefit from death, and honour is just one more false encouragement to violence in support of the motivations and the reasoning's of a powerful few.