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 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,
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.

The poem is written by Wilfred Owen in the 1920. It is based on the poet’s experience of war and there is a first person narrator. In the poem emerges all the atrocity of war and the most important theme of the poem is the patriotism. In the first stanza soldiers are compared to “old beggars under sacks” and they are walking back to the trenches. Everyone is crippled; without sight; exhausted. In the second stanza the narrator is a part of the experience; he is a soldier too. Owens’s disdain for the war is highlighted by his poetry.

Reading the title “Dulce et decorum est” the reader expects the poem to be about something honorable, sweet.

The title is a quotation from Horace, it means “sweet and honorable”. The second element to consider is the layout. The structure consists of 4 stanzas. In the first stanza there are 8 lines. The function of the octave is to describe some soldiers who are marching away from the front. The reader understands that reading line 4. The speaking voice is a soldier. He’s described what his company do during an attack of their enemy. He doesn’t say who are the enemy. It may means that the poet doesn’t want to drove the reader attention on a specific enemy, the enemy could be anybody.

The first octave is made up of two quatrains. The function of the octave is to present to the reader the terrible condition of the war. It conveys the tragic moment/situation the soldiers had to face.