Stanza two contrasts sharply in tone and rhythm to convey the shock and horror of the gas attack. This creates a sharp contrast to the next stanza. The rhythm is slow and plodding, lulling the audience into a sense of exhaustion and conveying the mood of the soldiers. Even the weapons seem exhausted as they are personified as "tired, outstripped Five-Nines". The tone of the poem is becoming more lethargic with the soporific alliteration in "Men marched.many" and the long vowel sounds in the the repeated "All.all". The metaphor of "haunting flares" completes the imagery as ghostly flashes of light flicker in the background. Imagery is further evoked through Owen's use of onomatopoeia in "sludge", "trudge" and "hoots" so the audience can be fully transported from the comfort of their homes to the harsh realities of war. This is carried on through the poem, with the soldier's direct gaze replaced by "All went lame all blind", wholesomeness giving way to "Drunk with fatigue" and "blood-shod" feet. The first two lines confront the reader with a sharp contrast to the proud soldiers of their imaginations and the propaganda of the time. Note too that images of masculinity are replaced with images of aged femininity. The images of healthy young soldiers with rosy cheeks are replaced with the simile "coughing like hags". Upright, proud images are subverted by the simile "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed". The poem opens with a series of images that directly undermine or subvert the images depicted in propaganda posters of the time. Owen’s words are intense and arresting, delivering a poem of such intensity and horror that manages to capture scene after scene of a hideous, pointless war The tone of Jesse Pope’s exhortative verses is summed up with “such high zest”. “Guttering” conveys the sound of the last flickers of life in the moments before a painful death. The “ecstasy of fumbling” evokes both the sharpness of fear and the clumsiness of exhaustion. Literally the bombs are tired: “outstripped Five-Nines”, but it is the fatigue of the men that makes them seem so. It is a confronting and powerful poem.Īs is always the case with Owen, there are well chosen words that deepen the poem’s meaning and make it vivid: “haunting flares” which transform the whole setting of the poem into a nightmare. It confronts the society of the day but also is able to reach out to all the ‘civilized’ societies. Its tone, however, is not of compassion but of indignation and bitterness. It is a poem dictated by the truth, not by beauty. Owen was greatly concerned about the patriotism of people who knew nothing of the horrors of fighting and Dulce et Decorum Est is an attempt to show up authors with such views. She was a writer of light verse who turned to patriotic themes when the war broke out and she published many verses in the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, exhorting young men to join up. She and those like her are therefore the ‘friend’ of line 25. One of the drafts of the poem bears the dedication ‘To Jesse Pope etc’. He sent it to his mother with the words: “Here is a gas poem done yesterday.The famous Latin tag (from Horace, Odes, 111.ii.13) means of course ‘It is sweet and meet (noble) to die for one’s country.’ Sweet! and decorous!” In Owen’s “Table of Contents” it is under the heading “Indifference at home”. This poem was written in October 1917 when Owen was in Craiglockhart Hospital. To children ardent for some desperate glory, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,. If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodĬome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin If in some smothering dreams you too could paceĪnd watch the white eyes writhing in his face, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling,īut someone still was yelling out and stumbling,Īnd flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.ĭim, through the misty panes and thick green light,Īs under a green sea, I saw him drowning. Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. All went lame all blind ĭrunk with fatigue deaf even to the hoots Many had lost their bootsīut limped on, blood-shod. Till on the haunting flares we turned our backsĪnd towards our distant rest began to trudge. Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
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