Very few war poems are able to conjure up the horrifying realities of the First World War like Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est, one of the greatest war poems of all time.
When did Wilfred Owen write Dulce et Decorum Est?
Taken from the Latin for ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’, the title drips with bitter irony. Wilfred Owen wrote this poem in 1917 while recovering from shell shock at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh.
What poured out was a horrifying account of his experiences from the front lines specifically, of British soldiers attacked with chlorine gas, that continues to rank among the most vivid condemnations of war in poetry.
Has Dulce et Decorum Est been set to music?
There are fewer musical settings of the poem than one might expect, one piece that successfully captures its visceral power is ‘dulce et decorum - requiem for peace’ by the Canadian composer Larry Nickel.
Dulce et Decorum Est lyrics
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.