dulce et decorem est. Please read this poem if you haven't read it lately

[democrat in Tallahassee]

by Wilfred Owens, WWI poet (it is sweet and fitting to die for your country.)

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 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.*

*"It is sweet and meet (fitting) to die for one's country

[Hatalles]

1. It's my favorite poem...

Apparently it was written in response to a writer who glorified war and one's 'noble' duty to fight for the country. It's so sad Wilfred Owen died in the war -- he had the potential to become one of the most remembered poets in English history.

[DemoTex]

2. I post "DULCE ET DECORUM EST" every week or so.

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.

It is much easier for chickenhawks to tell The old Lie. And they do, every day.

[democrat in Tallahassee]

3. those English kids in WWI were so naive. But I guess all kids are

where war is concerned. I remember seeing Hardball (i think it was tweety) doing a show from the Citadel before the war started and they were all gung ho to get to Iraq. I can't help but wonder how many of those kids aren't coming home. But I'm sure it never crosses our great leader's mind.

[blonndee]

4. My freshman comp students just read this poem and we discussed it in class

Friday in the context of an "implicit argument." It went over really well. I love Wilfred Owen.

[Tinoire]

5. Wow! I'd never read that before!

WWI and yet that could have been written yesterday :(

Thank you for posting this. I feel richer for having read it.

[DemoTex]

6. Read also Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front."

... perhaps the most sublime anti-war prose ever. Wilfred Owens' anti-war poems, especially Dulce et Decorum est are in the same league. Warmongers do not generally read this genre of literature. Too bad. They, more than any others, need instruction against their pitiful, narrow view of war.

[Tsiyu]

7. He lived what he wrote of: War

Few can say that; they glorify what they have never seen.

When people turned away from the pictures of dead iraqi babes i had on my car, i wanted to say, "How can you support something you won't even LOOK at?"


http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Owen2.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jowen.htm

Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth (1917)

What passing bells for those who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in the eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.



(Another gem)

[DemoTex]

8. "Few can say that; they glorify what they have never seen."

That is so true, friend.

[Maiden England]

13. we actually studied that in school

its what happens when you grow in a den of socialism, which would be England....
Great book.

[Protagoras]

9. I've carried around Owen's collected works

for about 25 years now. He and Sigfried Sassoon are simply without peer when it comes to exposing the nasty naked truth of war.

Glad to know there are other's out there keeping up.

(and thanks to Dr. Olson, those many years ago for giving me my first exposure to these poems and all the thoughts that have followed since.)

[PA Democrat]

10. I posted this poem on another thread earlier today

Chris Hedges printed this poem in the opening pages of his book War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. I highly recommend the book, if you haven't read it.

As a veteran war correspondent, Chris Hedges has survived ambushes in Central America, imprisonment in Sudan, and a beating by Saudi military police. He has seen children murdered for sport in Gaza and petty thugs elevated into war heroes in the Balkans. Hedges, who is also a former divinity student, has seen war at its worst and knows too well that to those who pass through it, war can be exhilarating and even addictive: “It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.”

Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting the most basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400034639/104-2099662-0727123

[Eloriel]

11. Here's my favorite anti-war poem

from the distaff side:

Patterns
by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles
on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon --
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

----

I'm a little shocked to re-read it after all these years. I recited this in my high school speech/drama class, 1964. Blush

But it still strikes me to the very core. As if I needed that tonight.


Edit: wanted to add rhis:
So, I saw my first Iraq War Amputee today
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1522838

[ironflange]

12. The Wilfred Owen Archive

http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/browse.html

Text, plus jpgs of the actual manuscripts. Terrific site.

My favorite:

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not they hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.