This is a First World War poem.
For many people it is 
the First World War poem,
the poem that most brilliantly, 
most accurately, most informatively
sums up the horrors, the fears, the terror 
of being a combatant, of being a soldier
in that particular military engagement.
The poem is written in 1918.
It is written by a man who 
soldiered in that war,
a man who experienced 
what he is talking about in the poem itself.
The poem's title, 
'Dulce Et Decorum Est' is Latin.
It's from the Latin poet Horace, 
and 'dulce et decorum est [pro patria mori]' means,
'it is sweet and fitting to die for your country'.
Other translations of this may be 
'it is sweet and right to die for you country',
or even 
'it is sweet and glorious to die for your country'.
Now Owen writes 'Dulce Et Decorum Est' 
at a time when military propaganda
- to get young men to enlist 
to join up and fight - is still going on.
The actual horrors of what 
the soldiers are experiencing on the front lines
have not been made fully apparent 
to the British public at the point when
Owen gives the world 
this particular poem.
So Owen is questioning the statement 
'dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori'
at a time when it is not very popular 
to have that statement questioned.
This is a time when Rupert Brooke's poem 
'The Soldier' which can basically be
summed up as meaning 
'if I die, all i want you to think about my death'
'is that I have died for my country'.
This is a time when that particular sentiment 
very much sums up the zeitgeist of the time.
That is the sentiment which people in power 
want young British men to feel and think.
So Owen's poem here is 
very much questioning that.
This poem is very much 
an anti-recruitment poem.
Now, to explain the poem to you, 
I'll do it in three main sections.
I'll read the first stanza, 
and explain that.
For the second part, 
I'll look at the section of the poem between
'gas, gas, boys--an ecstasy of fumbling' and 
'he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
And for the third part, 
I'll look at the final stanza of the poem.
Then, at the end, I'll give you an example
 of the type of propaganda poetry
that Wilfred Owen is addressing 
in writing 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'.
So this is the first read through of 
Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'.
Make sure you have a copy of the poem 
in order to annotate as we go through this
when I explain the poem to you.
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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped 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 floundering 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.
That's Wilfred Owen, post 1918.
To understand what is going on in 
the first stanza of this poem,
it's helpful to have a diagram of 
the way the First World War was fought.
The First World War was fought 
through trench warfare.
If you look at what we have here, 
at the top, we have the German trenches;
the bottom, we have the English trenches, 
and between those is no man's land.
The idea behind the trench warfare way 
of military engagement is that
one side will charge the trenches of the others, 
they would hope not to get mown down
by the machine guns which were at the 
front lines of those trenches,
and hopefully, some of the soldiers 
would get into the trenches
and be able to engage in 
hand-to-hand combat with their enemy,
hopefully killing enough of their enemy 
in order to overrun the trenches.
It was usually done 
in groups of three.
The British soldiers would 
charge the German machine guns -
the first line would almost 
inevitably be mown down -
hopefully some from the 
second and third lines would be able to
get into the trenches in order to 
wipe out the German soldiers in those trenches.
Now, you can imagine being at 
the front lines in these trenches,
and these trenches are 
water-logged, rat-infested, freezing cold,
hell-on-earth places.
And from these trenches, 
you are being asked to
charge across no man's land to 
kill your fellow men in the other trenches.
At the point when the poem opens, 
Wilfred Owen and his troop have
done their latest stint on the front lines, 
and they are walking away from the front lines,
they are going to be walking along here 
to come down away from No Man's Land,
away from the trenches 
to get to their distant rest.
Now remember, at the time when 
this poem is written,
the English soldier is thought to be the, 
or the English soldier is promoted as
the clean-limbed, young, Adonis-like, 
handsome young man
marching off to war for King and country, 
and happy to do so.
Bent double.
So straight away we have this image that 
the soldier's aren't upright, young men
marching gleefully off to war.
They're 'bent double'.
He describes them as 
'like beggars under sacks'.
The sacks are presumably their uniforms.
'Knock-kneed', 
they can't walk properly.
They're 'coughing like hags', 
hags are ugly old women.
So within the opening lines of the poem, 
the soldiers have been reduced by the reality of warfare
from these clean-limbed 
young men marching off to war,
to being compared to 
beggars and ugly old women.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
And I love this line, 
'cursed through sludge'.
It's the idea that the earth 
that they are walking on
is this earth that 
Rupert Brooke was to write of as,
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field 
that is forever England.'
This is that corner 
of that foreign field.
There shall be in that rich earth 
a richer dust concealed.
That rich earth, and that richer dust 
is this sludge which he is walking through.
We cursed through sludge
and you get this image of 
the soldiers bent double,
absolutely exhausted, 
and they're moving through this
wet, horrible, cursed earth, 
and they're going 'fucking hell...'
And it's only their hatred of 
the actual earth that they're walking on
that's enabling them 
to move in the first place.
Hatred can be a very 
useful, energizing factor.
And the way he described it, 
'we cursed through the sludge'.
'Cursed' is not a verb of movement, 
but he makes it one here.
I'll read that opening line again.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, 
we cursed through sludge,
Even the way that you read it 
is a great example of the form,
the way that the poem is written, 
enhancing what is being written about.
It's not written in a sort of 
jaunty, jolly, iambic pentameter, of
'if I should die, think only this of me'.
When you read this, 
the difficulty of reading it
is very much like the difficulty of 
the movement that the soldiers have.
It's almost as if the line is 
difficult to start up.
I imagine reading it like, 
for some reason, it puts the image of someone
trying to start one of those 
old aeroplane engines with it.
You put the crank in to start.
And the soldiers are there,
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, 
we cursed through sludge,
And any way you read this, 
it is not making their appearance look pleasant,
and the way that you say it 
is not making their movement look easy.
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs 
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Note that it's trudge, not march.
'The haunting flares' are 
the flares of no man's land.
They light up no man's land so the soldiers can 
see each other to kill each other.
Wilfred Owen and his men are 
walking along the front lines
and they've turned their back 
on the haunting flares of no man's land
to get towards their distant rest.
So down here, they have their time 
away from the front lines
and some well earned rest.
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs 
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep.
They're not literally asleep, but 
they're so exhausted
that it's as if they are asleep.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots 
But limped on, blood-shod.
What a fantastic line that is.
'Many had lost their boots', 
the soldiers haven't got their full uniforms.
Literally, that's what it means, 
many of the soldiers
have lost their boots, 
but they limp on, blood-shod.
'Blood-shod' is the great phrase here. 
'Blood-shod' means, well we shoe a horse,
when we put a shoe on a horse's hoof, 
we put a metal shoe on.
But these soldiers are blood-shod, 
it's as if they haven't got their own boots,
but where they have bled, 
through the soles of their feet,
the blood has coagulated and hardened, 
and it has formed a protective coating
on the soles of their own feet. 
The soldiers are blood-shod.
And of course, this whole idea of 
the soldiers being shod in the same way
that horses are shod, 
they've been reduced to animals here.
At the start of the poem, 
Owen has reduced the soldiers to- or
the reality of the warfare 
that the soldiers are engaged in
has reduced the soldiers to 
beggars, old hags, and animals.
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? 
says Owen in 'Anthem for Doomed Youth',
another one of his poems.
Many had lost their boots 
But limped on, blood-shod.
All went lame
'Lame' is another word 
we usually associate with animals,
we don't usually talk of 
humans going lame.
All went lame; all blind; 
Drunk with fatigue;
When he says they've gone blind, 
he doesn't literally mean they've gone blind.
They're so exhausted, 
they can't see properly.
They are so tired, 
they are 'drunk with fatigue'.
This is not the 'wahey, let's go and have a party' 
type of drunk,
this is the 'slumped at the edge of the bar 
at the end of the evening so exhausted'
'that you can't remember what you're doing there 
in the first place' type of drunk.
Deaf even to the hoots 
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
'Deaf', they can't hear.
The hoots of tired, outstripped 
Five-Nines that dropped behind.
The 'Five-Nines' are a particularly disruptive 
type of German artillery.
A bomb, if you like.
And they are now out of 
the range of the Five-Nines.
If you look at the graphic- 
if you imagine the blue line,
that's the trajectory, that's the range 
that the Five-Nines can reach.
So if they are still within that range, 
they can be killed by the Five-Nines.
But they've 'outstripped the Five-Nines', 
they've got far enough away
so they can't be killed 
by the Five-Nines anymore.
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots 
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
The 'hoots', the sound like an owl 
is obviously the sound
that the Five-Nines bombs make 
as they fall behind the soldiers,
as they turn their backs on 
the haunting flares of No Man's Land,
and get towards 
their well earned rest.
Now I'll read this opening stanza through 
one more time and then
I'll show you one of the words in this poem 
that I cannot make myself like.
So, the poem starts with:
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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Now the word I don't like there is 'tired', 
because literally speaking, a bomb can't be tired.
It can't be tired, 
it can't be enthusiastic.
To call a bomb tired is surely, 
it's actually a bad piece of writing.
That particular line was rendered 
in original drafts of the poem.
It wasn't 
'of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind'.
Owen wrote, 'of disappointed shells that dropped behind' 
in one of the drafts.
And another version was, I think, 
'of gas shells dropping silently'
or 'softly behind. 
'Of gas shells dropping softly behind'.
But the line he went with was, 
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
So, he thought it through, 
but a bomb can't be tired.
Literally, a bomb can't be tired.
If I want to try and redeem the line, 
perhaps we could say that
the soldier himself is so exhausted that 
he projects onto his environment
so that everything he sees, 
he sees in the same way
that he experiences things himself.
So that the bombs are tired 
in the same way that he is tired.
But, why I don't like that line is, 
I think it can almost be thought of
as comic, if you're not careful.
It's the idea that the bombs could get him, 
if they were not quite so tired.
The bomb comes flying over 
and the bomb goes,
'ah, I'm just too tired, 
I can't be bothered, I'm too exhausted'.
And the soldiers only escape because 
the bombs are too tired to actually get them.
And this is not the case.
You are either within the range 
of the bombs, or you are not.
So I don't like that line.
We'll now come to the second section 
of the poem, which is the gas attack.
The soldiers are out of range 
of the Five-Nine bombs,
they're away from No Man's Land, 
they're out of the trenches, and we hear,
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling, 
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling 
And floundering 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.
So what has become apparent here is that 
although the soldiers are out of range
of the artillery, they are not 
out of range of the gas bombs.
And there has been a gas bomb attack.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
I think this is a terrific line, 
this 'ecstasy of fumbling'.
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
Plainly, the clumsy helmets are the gas masks 
that the soldiers have to put on
to stop themselves from 
breathing in the gas.
It's mustard gas that was 
used in the trenches.
The soldiers have got to 
get their gas masks on.
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time
The 'ecstasy of fumbling' which he speaks of here 
is the adrenaline rush that
invigorates the soldiers, 
the exhausted bodies of these soldiers
who know they've got to 
get the gas masks on,
otherwise, they're going to 
breathe in the poison gas and die.
And they get the helmets and 
they're trying to put the helmets on
and they can't do it, 
they're too tired, they're fumbling,
this 'ecstasy of fumbling' that they feel 
'fitting the clumsy helmets just in time'.
The pumping of adrenaline that would 
go through you under those conditions.
'An ecstasy of fumbling' - terrific line.
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
And if I just draw attention 
to the word 'clumsy' here.
Really, a helmet can't be clumsy 
in the same way a bomb can't be tired.
You can put the helmet on in a clumsy way, 
but the helmet itself can't be clumsy.
And yet I don't particularly mind that word, 
because a clumsy helmet is
is more an accusation made by the soldier 
against the helmet.
He's having trouble putting the helmet on 
so he calls the helmet, 'clumsy'.
That fits in perfectly with the soldiers' 
thought process at this time, I think.
But to call the bombs tired 
seems to have a little too much
sympathy for the bombs.
Whereas, as I say, 
to call the helmet clumsy,
is a nice accusation against the helmet, 
totally in character with the soldiers' thought process.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling, 
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
They just got their helmets on in time 
to survive the gas attack.
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling 
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Someone's not managed to get their 
gas mask on in time.
They're calling out, this person is calling out, 
he's floundering like a fish out of water.
Fire and lime are 
things which burn people.
So if you can imagine this man 
staggering towards Wilfred Owen
as if he's on fire, 
calling out to him.
Floundering 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.
Now the dim panes, 
dim through the misty panes.
The misty panes are the 
panes of the gas mask.
The gas mask would make 
everything appear to be green.
Mustard gas is yellow, but 
seen through a gas mask, it'll be green.
Owen sees his friend come 
staggering towards him,
as if he is on fire and 
he is unable to help him.
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light 
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
He imagines him drowning on 
dry land in the poison gas,
which destroys your lungs of course.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, 
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
He can't forget this.
By 'dreams' here of course 
he means nightmares.
Each dream he has 
is a nightmare
of his friend staggering towards him, 
'guttering, choking, drowning'.
'Guttering' is the sound of a candle- 
or the way that a candle goes out is to gutter.
I think that word is used more for 
its sound than for its image.
The image of a candle going out 
is often very beautiful, very serene.
And I don't think that's 
what Owen wants to convey.
What he wants to convey here is 
done more by the sound of 'guttering'.
'Guttering, choking, drowning'.
So I'll read that 
gas attack section once more.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling, 
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling 
And floundering 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.
And now we come to 
the final stanza of the poem,
which is an extraordinary piece of writing, 
as if what has gone before
isn't extraordinary enough, 
Owen gives us this.
And note how the 
addressee of the poem changes.
Previously, he's just been 
explaining an incident.
Now, the poem is specifically 
addressed to someone,
to a 'you', to a person 
he later calls, 'my friend'.
But I'll read it through first 
and then do the close reading of each line.
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.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace 
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
Obviously, Owen and his fellow soldiers 
have picked up the soldier
who has breathed in the poison gas, 
and the soldier is not dead yet,
so they've picked him up and they've 
put him in the back of a wagon.
I imagine the wagon as a 
rickety, old, wooden wagon,
with old wooden wheels 
which the soldiers are pulling.
But Owen himself is pacing behind it.
Note the word he uses to 
describe the way the soldiers have
placed their wounded comrade in the wagon: 
'flung' him in.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace 
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
They flung him in. 
They haven't placed him in,
they've flung him, 
they know he's going to die.
 If in some smothering dreams.
I love 'smothering dreams' here.
Obviously, they're nightmares again 
that he's talking about.
But it's the idea of smothering.
Smothering, usually we use that word 
to explain a fire.
You get 'smothered' by a blanket.
When something smothers us, 
it takes all the oxygen away,
it takes all the life out of us, 
and it's as if these dreams,
these nightmares that Owen has had, 
they've smothered the life out of him.
And he's saying to the person 
he's addressing the poem to,
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace 
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
Owen's pacing behind the wagon, 
looking at this wounded soldier
in the wagon in front of him, 
and he says,
'if you could watch the 
white eyes writhing in his face',
it's as if the pupils and irises 
of his eyes have just shot up.
They're writhing around like that. 
They're-
if you wanted to be very pedantic about it, 
eyes can't really writhe,
but we know exactly what it means.
If there was a situation where 
an eye could writhe in
the agony usually associated with 
the human body and not just the eye,
this would be it.
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, 
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
'His hanging face', 
presumably Owen means
a face that looks like 
someone who's just been hung.
I tend to imagine that 
'his hanging face',
rather like Edvard Munch's painting, 
'The Scream'.
It's that picture 
that I see when I hear,
his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
'Like a devil's sick of sin' 
may be even more difficult to imagine.
What does the face of a 
devil who is sick of sin look like?
I get the idea when I hear that line 
of the devil which is responsible for all evil
in the world is watching this, 
and is just saying,
'I'm just sick of this. 
This is too disgusting. Even I have got a line.'
To me it's more prescriptive of the way 
the devil feels about what's actually going on.
'This is just disgusting, 
I'm sick of it.'
Any way you try to imagine the idea 
of the face of a devil that is sick of sin,
the idea of a hanging face, 
the idea of white eyes
writhing within a face, 
any way you imagine those images,
it is not going to be something pleasant 
that your mind concocts.
And after that, we come to, for me, 
two of the most acoustically powerful lines
in poetry that I am aware of.
If there's a better line 
for conjuring up acoustically,
the horrors of someone 
choking to death, I don't know what it is.
Listen to this.
The sound that this 
line actually makes.
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,--
If you could hear, at every jolt
So as the wagon comes away 
from the trenches,
we can assume it is going to 
jolt quit often. [Jolt, jolt, jolt]
And every time it jolts, 
Wilfred Owen hears the
'blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs'.
That's what the mustard gas attack 
has done to his friend.
His lungs are corrupted, there's froth within, 
the blood is coming from his mouth.
'The blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs'.
In fact, it doesn't come from his mouth, 
it comes all the way from his lungs.
Fantastic line.
Obscene as cancer
Which I have to say, 
I don't particularly like.
I don't like it because 'obscene as cancer' 
seems to me to be a lazy simile now.
Whether or not it was a lazy simile in 1918 
is a different matter completely.
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud 
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
Now cud is what a cow chews 
when it regurgitates its food.
And partially, for me, this line achieves the idea 
of Owen keeps regurgitating the image,
he can't get rid of the picture 
of his friend staggering towards him,
'guttering, choking, drowning'.
Bitter as the cud 
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
The 'vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues', 
conjures up an image of syphilis to me.
That was how syphilis 
presented itself.
These 'vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues'.
And it's innocent, meaning, 
sexually inexperienced.
The unfairness of the 
sexually inexperienced boy dying of syphilis.
The bitterness, the unfairness of it.
Bitter as the cud 
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
And of course the soldiers who are in this war 
can be seen as innocent.
They don't really know what they're doing.
They're not experienced at life, 
they're young, very young men fighting this war.
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud 
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
Then Owen says,
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.
'My friend'.
We'll come back to 
who that 'my friend' is later.
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest'
'Zest' is keenness, enthusiasm. 
'My friend, you would be so keen to tell'
children ardent for some desperate glory,
Children who want to be heroes, 
that's what 'ardent for some desperate glory' means.
Keen to be a hero.
Owen is saying, 
'if you have seen what I have seen,'
'you would not be so keen to tell 
young men, kids, who want to be heroes,'
'"it is sweet and fitting, glorious, right, 
to die for your country."'
Because, I have seen those young men 
dying for our country,
and there is nothing 
fitting, right, or glorious about it.'
It's worth noting what Owen 
actually asks you to do here,
in this final stanza, 
which is one sentence, incidentally.
In that final stanza, 
he doesn't ask you to
imagine what it is like to be 
the soldier who breathes the mustard gas.
He doesn't ask you what it is like to be 
one of those soldiers who is dying for his country.
All he asks you to do is be him, 
is be the person who has
watched one of his friends 
dying for his country.
Be the person who has 
'heard the blood coming gargling
'from the froth-corrupted lungs'.
He doesn't say, 
'see the blood coming gargling'
'from the froth-corrupted lungs' 
in that line either.
He says, if you could hear, at every jolt, the blood 
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
In the act of attempting to hear it, 
we inevitably see it as well.
What Owen asks 
the addressee of the poem to do here,
it shows a lot of integrity.
He's not asking the person 
he addresses the poem to
to do anything that 
he hasn't done himself.
So of course, the question now must be raised: 
who is he addressing the poem to?
Now, there's another Mycroft Online Lecture 
which we've done on Rupert Brooke's
pre-First World War poem, 
'The Soldier'.
And 'The Soldier' was a very popular poem, 
as I mentioned at the start,
for recruiting young men for warfare.
And it was very successful for that, 
and it would be very apt if
Wilfred Owen was addressing the Rupert Brooke 
who wrote 'The Solder' in this poem.
It would be very apt, 
but in fact, he's not.
The poem was originally addressed to 
a woman called Jessie Pope.
It was later addressed to, 
'To a Certain Poetess'.
And Jessie Pope was a woman who 
wrote very patriotic verses;
the sort of woman who would 
hand out white feathers
to young men to go and encourage them 
to get their limbs blown off
in the trenches of Flanders.
If we wanted to be kinder 
to the type of propaganda
which was believed in and 
expounded by people like Jessie Pope,
perhaps we could argue that before 
poems like 'Dulce Et Decorum Est' get written,
they actually don't know what the 
reality of the First World War trenches is.
Until brave young men like Wilfred Owen 
experience the horrors of that existence,
and have talent enough to write about it, 
and bring these horrors back
for the public to read and understand, 
perhaps it could be argued that
the propaganda machine 
at the start of the First World War
literally thought that what 
they were saying was the truth,
and perhaps it could be argued 
that they didn't as well.
I'll finish by reading Jessie Pope's 
early First World War recruitment poem,
'Who's for the Game'.
This is the type of poem that 
seems to see warfare
as some sort of 
overzealous rugby match.
So I'll read this out, 
and then read you,
for the final time, 
Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'.
Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played, 
The red crashing game of a fight?
Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid? 
And who thinks he’d rather sit tight?
Who’ll toe the line for the signal to ‘Go!’? 
Who’ll give his country a hand?
Who wants a turn to himself in the show? 
And who wants a seat in the stand?
Who knows it won’t be a picnic – not much- 
Yet eagerly shoulders a gun?
Who would much rather come back with a crutch 
Than lie low and be out of the fun?
Come along, lads – But you’ll come on all right – 
For there’s only one course to pursue,
Your country is up to her neck in a fight,
And she’s looking and calling for you.
Jessie Pope, 1915.
Now, as the antidote to this, 
we get Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'.
And let's remember that Wilfred Owen 
was not what we would call a 'pacifist'.
Wilfred Owen was a full-on 
soldier in that war.
Wilfred Owen elected to go 
back to the front lines at the end of the war,
to see the war through to the end.
And when Owen returns to 
fight on the front lines, he is killed.
He dies in the final week of warfare.
He dies almost one week to the hour, 
before the final armistice.
So, when this genuine military hero 
says this about the act of warfare,
the realities of warfare, 
this is somebody we have to listen to.
This is someone saying that 
if you're going to be sending young men out to fight,
let's make sure you understand the 
realities of what's actually going on there.
And he does it through this poem.
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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped 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 floundering 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.
Let me just mention one more thing 
about the end of that poem.
The final line of it, 'the old lie: 
it is sweet and glorious to die for your country'.
The poem itself is more or less 
written in iambic pentameter.
More or less. 
And the final lines of it,
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.
Don't we miss something at 
the point when he says, 'pro patria mori'?
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est 
Pro patria mori. [Dm dm dm]
And I thought for a long time 
why Owen ended the poem
in the way that he does like that, 
and the conclusion that I've come to
is that, it works as if 
Owen has turned his back on
the natural rhythm of the poem, 
in the same way that he has turned his back
on the old lie that is 
'dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori'.
So we hear,
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.
And Owen turns away, 
leaving the [dm dm dm]
that we expect to 
follow the sentiment, behind.
That was the Mycroft Online Lecture 
for Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce Et Decorum Est'.
I am Dr. Andrew Barker.
Thank you very much.
