Wilfred Owen, The War Poet

Manuscript on “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 disappointed shells 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 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.

Dulce et Decorum Est is a poem written by British poet and World War I soldier Wilfred Owen in 1917, and was published posthumously in 1920. The Poem was drafted at Craig Lockhart in the first half of October 1917 and later revised, probably at Scarborough, between January and March 1918. The earliest surviving manuscript is dated 8 Oct 1917 addressed to his mother Susan Owen with the message "Here is a gas poem done yesterday, (which is not private, but not final)".

The 28-line poem, which is written in loose iambic pentameter, is narrated by Owen himself.  He utilises vivid imagery to give the readers the exact feelings and showing how terrible and devastating a war can be.  It tells of a group of soldiers in World War I, forced to trudge “through sludge,” though “drunk with fatigue,” marching slowly away from the falling explosive shells behind them, towards a place of rest. As gas shells begin to fall upon them, the soldiers scramble to put on their gas masks to protect themselves. In the rush, one man clumsily drops his mask, and the narrator sees the man "yelling out and stumbling / and flound'ring like a man in fire or lime". 

The image of the man "guttering, choking, drowning" permeates Owen‘s thoughts and dreams, forcing him to relive the nightmare again and again. Owen, in the final stanza enforces that, should readers see what he has seen, they (the government) would cease to send young men to war, all the while instilling visions of glory in their heads. No longer would they tell their children the "Old Lie," so long ago told by the Roman poet Horace: "Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori" (literally, "Sweet and fitting it is to die for your native land").

            Owen was a true revolutionary poet, opening up new fields of sensitiveness for his successors.  If he had lived there is no knowing what his promise might have achieved; he would have found active in different guises, the oppression, the sufferings and courage which had challenged his powers during the war.  Owen’ poetry is an excellent example portraying the realism of war and the damages done due to this adult’s game.  His youth, his small but eloquent body of verse, his intense dedication to the truth, his untimely unnecessary death – all of these factors combined to make him an irresistible figure to the succeeding generation, whose ‘stable background’ of traditional forms and values had, like Owen’s, been destroyed by the war.

Works Cited:

1.    Stallworthy, Jon. Wilfred Owen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

2.    Blunden, Edmund. ed. The Poems of Wilfred Owen. London: Chatto &

              Windus, 1931.

3.    Hibberd, Dominic. ed. Poetry of the First World War. London: Macmilan

              Press Ltd., 1981.

4.    Breen, Jennifer. ed. Wilfred Owen: Selected Poetry and Prose. London and

              New York: Routledge, 1988.

5.    Bell, John. ed. Wilfred Owen: Selected Letters. New York: Oxford University

              Press, 1985.