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 gurgling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitten 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.
From "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918