Wilfred Owen's famous war poem describes the agony of war by dramatizing a single scene filled with the misery caused by mustard gas.
Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” contains four stanzas. The first stanza consists of eight lines with the rime scheme ABABCDCD. The second stanza consists of six lines with the rime scheme ABABCD. The third stanza is merely two lines but its content requires that it stand out from the others; although it continues the rime scheme from the preceding stanza CD. The fourth stanza consists of twelve lines, with the rime scheme ABABCDCDEFEF.
First Stanza: “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”
In the first stanza, the speaker describes the march of soldiers who have fought hard, but now they are out of supplies and in desperate need of medical attention. The speaker is one the soldiers describing his fellow soldiers. He says they are “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge.”
But as bad as their condition is it about to get worse because they are barely staying ahead of “gas-shells dropping softly behind.” Many have no boots and their feet are bleeding, but they are heading to their “distant rest” though it is a difficult march. They are so tired it is almost impossible to function.
Second Stanza: “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling”
But then suddenly someone calls out “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” And they begin hastily to put on their “clumsy helmets.” But one soldier did not get his gas mask on in time, and the speaker describes him: “But someone still was yelling out and stumbling / And flound'ring 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.”
The way mustard gas affects the respiratory system mimics drowning, and thus the speaker is accurate is portraying the dying man as a drowning victim. The speaker likens the sight as “under a green sea” denoting the way the air would look after they had been bombarded with mustard gas. The air looked like the sea, and the man who failed to get his helmet on in time is therefore drowning.
Third Stanza: “In all my dreams before my helpless sight”
The third stanza consists of merely two lines, but they stand out in the speaker’s mind, so therefore it is artistically beneficial to have the lines stand alone: “In all my dreams before my helpless sight / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.”
The speaker is haunted by the sight of his fellow soldier dying from the horrible mustard gas. He is dramatizing this scene some time after it occurred, and his dreams are filled with this unforgettable sight, which becomes a regular nightmare for the speaker.
Fourth Stanza: “If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace”
In the fourth stanza, the speaker addresses the reader, telling the reader that if he could experience the horrid scene of seeing a man die this excruciating death, “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.”
The speaker calls the reader “My friend,” but the poet no doubt had in mind the politicians and military leaders who were encouraging young men to participate in the war effort.
Commentary
This poem is set in World War I, and Wilfred Owen was a British soldier. So he probably did actually see the scene he describes in the poem and his experience convinced him that the Horace quotation, “Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori” or “It is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country,” was no true. The speaker does not believe that dying for one’s country is as Horace said.
Yet despite the fact that “war is hell,” many soldiers perform their duty under squalid conditions because they do believe the Horace quotation, and they would say to Owen that that is what soldiers do, they serve and die, and they die with honor, and do not whine about it.
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