Dulce et decorum est

[soubriquet 0]

This will be new to some. Wilfred Owen on war (WWI).

 

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 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.

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.

[soubriquet 0]

The last two lines translate to:

 

How meet and sweet it is

to die for your country.

 

(I'll take correction from Latin scholars)

[kokodoko 67]

I am not a latin scholar. Just four years at high school.

 

decorum may be translated as "right" or appropriate.

Meet is an ok translation as well.

 

dulce would relate to modern italian dolce as in La Dolce Vita.

 

not a bad poem that. I could not imagine being in those trenches. yuk.

[me jane 0]

What made you think of that Soubs? Haven't read it before. Might do it with a couple of students - thanks!

[soubriquet 0]

I like poetry. Wilfred Owen was killed in September 1918, a month before the end of WWI. He was a true Welshman, and had the gift of the tongue, me jane.

[thursday 1]

I hope you'd allow another poet upon this tired realm.

Apoligies for the intrusion as SJ holds my helm.

 

 

This is W. H. Auden

 

As I walked out one evening,

Walking down Bristol Street,

The crowds upon the pavement

Were fields of harvest wheat.

 

And down by the brimming river

I heard a lover sing

Under an arch of the railway:

'Love has no ending.

 

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you

Till China and Africa meet,

And the river jumps over the mountain

And the salmon sing in the street,

 

'I'll love you till the ocean

Is folded and hung up to dry

And the seven stars go squawking

Like geese about the sky.

 

'The years shall run like rabbits,

For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

And the first love of the world.'

 

But all the clocks in the city

Began to whirr and chime:

'O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

 

'In the burrows of the Nightmare

Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

And coughs when you would kiss.

 

'In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

To-morrow or to-day.

 

'Into many a green valley

Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

And the diver's brilliant bow.

 

'O plunge your hands in water,

Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare in the basin

And wonder what you've missed.

 

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.

 

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes

And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,

And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,

And Jill goes down on her back.

 

'O look, look in the mirror,

O look in your distress:

Life remains a blessing

Although you cannot bless.

 

'O stand, stand at the window

As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbour

With your crooked heart.'

 

It was late, late in the evening,

The lovers they were gone;

The clocks had ceased their chiming,

And the deep river ran on.

[muikabochi 208]

What does all this mean?

[soubriquet 0]

This is what it means:

 

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

 

2.

 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

 

3.

 

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

[thursday 1]

that was Keats, To Autumn (1820)

[thursday 1]

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

 

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

 

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

 

 

W. H. Auden

[soubriquet 0]

A broken down ex-scientist and a Chinese speaking English as a foreign language! The linguists here should be ashamed of themselves. No poetry, no art, no pride, no shame.

[stemik 14]

Wilfred Owen - great war poet, but for myself Rupert Brooke

 

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

 

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

[thursday 1]

Meantime--Sir Laureate--I proceed to dedicate,

In honest simple verse, this song to you,

And, if in flattering strains I do not predicate,

'Tis that I still retain my "buff and blue";

My politics as yet are all to educate:

Apostasy's so fashionable, too,

To keep one creed's a task grown quite Herculean;

Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?

 

Lord Byron

[Pete the Shoemaker 0]

I have enjoyed (trying to) read it though....

[thursday 1]

In the beginning there was a river.

The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world.

And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.

 

Ben Okri

[Tubby Beaver 209]

I don't like poetry, I don't like the rhythm of the text as I read it. To stop/start for me, I much prefer flowing text such as short stories.

[thursday 1]

Soubs, where art thou be?