“Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem written by Wilfred Owen during World War I, published posthumously in 1920. The title is derived from the Latin phrase “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” which translates to “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
The poem is a powerful condemnation of the glorification of war, and specifically of the propaganda that encouraged young men to enlist in the armed forces. The poem begins with a vivid and disturbing description of soldiers marching through the mud and gas of the battlefield. The narrator describes the horrors of a gas attack, watching as one of his comrades dies in agony from the poison.
Owen’s poem is notable for its use of vivid and shocking imagery, its condemnation of the idea that it is noble to die for one’s country, and its devastating critique of war and its effects on those who fight in it. The final stanza of the poem is particularly poignant, as Owen addresses the reader directly and condemns the idea that war is glorious or heroic:
“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 has become one of the most celebrated anti-war poems in the English language, and is often studied and anthologized as an example of the powerful and devastating effects of war on those who fight it.
POEM:-
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.
