Created: 2023-10-08 15:30
Edited: 2024-10-26 13:59
Status: 🌲evergreen
Dulce et Decorum Est
Excerpt
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.[1]
Author: Owen, Wilfred
Source: =this.source
Links: =this.links
from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” ↩︎