Dulce et Decorum Est A #poem by Wilfred Owen written from memory: Bent double, like beggars under sacks, knocked-kneed coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge. Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, and towards our endless rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep, many had lost there boots, but marched on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind, drunk with fatigue, deaf, even to the hoots of tired outstripped five-nines which dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick boys, an ecstasy of fumbling, fitting the clumsy helmets just in time. But someone yet was yelling out and stumbling, like a man on fire or in lime. Dim, through the misty pains 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, chocking, drowning. If in some dream, you too could pace behind the wagon that we flung him in. And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, in his hanging face, like a devils sick of sin. And hear with every jolt the blood come gurgling from his froth-corrupted lungs. As obscene as cancer, as bitter as the cud, of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend you would not say, with such high zest, To children ardent for some desperate glory. That old lie: Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.