War Wounds

I studied this poem at school, and yet it didn't ruin for me its painful beauty. The literary genius of the alliteration, metaphor, oddly chosen adverbs and adjectives, the clever use of simile, anaphora, the rhyme scheme: all this is eclipsed by the strong images the poem conjures up, the`picture of young men fighting their way through the gas attack in pain and fear and desperation, which hasn't left my mind to this day. Add to this unutterable personal tragedy: Wilfred Owen was killed in battle a week before the end of the war, so that news of his death reached his village the day the end of the war was declared. A masterpiece.

Dulce Et Decorum Est: Wilfred Owen

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 floundering 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.