| Dulce Et Decorum Est Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Til 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 trudged 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!" -- a fumbling of ecstacy Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time. But someone still was yelling out and stumlbing And floundering like a man in fire or lime. -- Dim, through 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 that 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 glory, The old lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria mori. |
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| Wilfred Owen (1873-November 4 1918) |
| I am not, by nature, a pacifist. But when you read the words above, written not by an interested bystander, but by a man who lived - and died - on the battlefield; it is hard not to ask the question - why? |
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