Comments Elsewhere

Here are two sonnets for Memorial Day. http://ift.tt/1FSpY06 (To Jessie Pope, etc.) Bent double, like old beggars under sacks Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge Till on the haunting fires 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 disappointed shells 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 in lime.— Dim, through 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 distant glory The old lie: DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI —Wilfred Owen (Oct. 1917).