Dulce et Decorum est

"Dulce et Decorum Est" is a poem written by a British soldier and poet Wilfred Owen during the First World War in 1917, and published posthumously in 1920. Owen's poem is known for its horrifying imagery and its condemnation of war. It was drafted at Craiglockhart in the first half of October 1917 and later revised, probably at Scarborough but possibly Ripon, between January and March 1918. The earliest surviving manuscript is dated 8 Oct 1917 and addressed to his mother Susan Owen with the message "Here is a gas poem done yesterday, (which is not private, but not final)".

Summary

The 28-line poem, which is written in loose iambic pentameter, is narrated by Owen himself. 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 then talks about how he has to throw the man into the back of a wagon and the man's "hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin." Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori means `how sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country`.

Owen, in the final stanza, asserts that, should readers see what he has seen, they would no longer see fit to instill visions of glorious warfare in young men's 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" ("It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country")

Dedication

Throughout the poem, and particularly strong in the last stanza, there is a running commentary, a letter to Jessie Pope, a civilian propagandist of World War I, who encouraged—"with such high zest"—young men to join the battle, through her poetry, e.g. "Who's for the game".

The first draft of the poem, indeed, was dedicated to Pope. A later revision amended this to “a certain Poetess,” though this did not make it into the final publication, either, as Owen apparently decided to address his poem to the larger audience of war supporters in general. In the last stanza, however, the original intention can still be seen in Owen's bitter, horrific address. A fact that most people don't know is that he narrates the poem while the war is raging. He returns to England and does so to anyone who wishes to hear this tragic poem.

Title

The title and the Latin exhortation of the final two lines are drawn from a poem of Horace (Odes iii 2.13):

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:

mors et fugacem persequitur virum

nec parcit inbellis iuventae

poplitibus timidove tergo."

"How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country:

Death pursues the man who flees,

spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs

Of battle-shy youths."

These words were well known and often quoted by supporters of the war near its inception and, as such, were of particular importance to soldiers of the era.

References

• "Q. Horati Flaccvs". The Latin Library. Retrieved 2008-06-27.