Poetry

It is one of the dualities in Yeats’ work that a poet renowned for the universal forlorn love lyric should be so inextricably bound to the particular identity, struggle and destiny of the Irish nation. However, on closer examination, Yeats’ poetic style proves that seeming paradox is easily explained when the true nature of Yeats’ idealism is taken into account. This essay shall argue the apparent political revolutionary commitment seen in the 1910’s was something of an aberration, in a transitional period of his career. To locate this transition, it is necessary to start at the beginning and end of his life, and work inwards, tracing the changing portrayal of Ireland in his verse.

The early Yeats was part of a strong Romantic tradition. Its liking for the emotional authenticity of folk-lore found a ready place in Yeats’ work, as he exploited the rich Irish mythological tradition: his long narrative works all date from this first stage. The first collection uses the ballad form frequently, and the simplicity of poems like ‘To An Isle in the Water’ – “shy one, shy one/ shy one of my heart / she moves in the firelight” – recalls traditional Irish poetry.

Perhaps archetypal of Yeats’ early romantic pieces is ‘To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time’. His treatment of Ireland and formal technique come together under the auspices of traditional Romanticism: he is unapologetic about drawing from “Old Eire and the ancient ways.” The poem is populated by mythic and shadowy figures from Ireland’s Gaelic past: the warrior-king Cuchulain, a druid, and Fergus, sometime King of Ulster. Despite coming from an Irish Protestant family, Yeats still paints Ireland as a Celtic idyll, and evokes it using traditional Romantic imagery – stars, the sea, woodlands, flowers. The use of the rose as a motif throughout his early work is indebted not only to the Order of the Golden Dawn, but to Blake in particular. Both shared a mystical tendency beyond Christianity echoed by Yeats’ own wish to be a seer-poet in the Irish tradition: the keeper of the narrative of identity.

Formally and technically, it shows the clear legacy of Romanticism too. The opening line, in solid iambic pentameter, runs as a stylized invocation – a common technique of traditional lyrical verse. The repetitions echo prayer, further intensifying the spiritual dimension of the piece. The vocabulary, whilst not necessarily archaic, is certainly that of traditional poetic diction: “thine”, “whereof”, “boughs.” There is a similar stylization in the syntax – “I would, before my time to go” – and personification of “eternal beauty wandering on her way.”

This phase of his poetry, known as the ‘Celtic twilight’ period, is rich in similar poems; their keynote being Irish themes and myth married to Romantic style and concerns such as unrequited love, heroism and mystical union with nature. Other pieces which use Irish mythology are “The Hosting of the Sidhe’, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’, but the idea of a Celtic idyll (derived from the Romantic’s radical reshaping of pastoral idealism) runs throughout.

This early work is a strong contrast to his final collections, some three or four decades later. It is impossible to characterise such an extensive body of poetry with few examples, but the progression is distinctive. His cultural frame of reference seems far wider, drawing on such diverse sources as: “a Quattrocento painter’s throng / A thoughtless image of Mantegna’s thought”[1] to the famous symbolism of Byzantium, representing imaginative unity and the highest form of culture. Formally, the uniform elegiac tone of the early verse (broken only by simple ballads and refrains) is replaced by much greater variety. Yeats’ background in theatre comes through in many pieces relying on the dialogue form. There are also the unique and iconoclastic ‘Crazy Jane’ poems, as well as series of lyrics and fragments of a few lines. The tone is far less stylised and less self-consciously Romantic: ‘Crazy Jane’ represent the apex of a far more open and natural diction.

The portrayal of Ireland in these poems mirrors the new progression in style. ‘Under Ben Bulben’ sees Yeats’ rather desperately asking young writers to “learn your trade” and “cast your mind on other days.” This strikes a more resigned tone than the early ‘To Ireland In The Coming Times’ where Yeats affirmed: “I cast my heart into my rhymes” and evoked “faeries, dancing under the moon / A druid land, a druid tune!” ‘Parnell’s Funeral’ is not so much resigned, as starkly cynical, with Yeats stating: “all that was sung / all that was said in Ireland is a lie / bred out of the contagion of the throng.” It is an attitude shared in the acerbic ‘The Great Day’ and also ‘Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen’ which describes the “traffic in mockery”:

“We, who seven years ago

Talked of honour and truth,

Shriek with pleasure if we show

The weasel’s twist, the weasel’s tooth”

The poems in The Tower and The Winding Stair, particularly, portray melancholy despair which sees Yeats retreating, whether it be to the symbolic Byzantium, or his own watchtower at Coole Park. The everyday chaos of Ireland is left behind as Yeats surrenders to reflection. Yet this also marks a continuation between the two periods; in the figure of a solitary, reflective artist: “a man in his own secret meditation / is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made” (‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen.’) We see, too, that Yeats had lost none of his gift for the lyric.Note the solemn mysticism of “wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood” (‘Her Vision In The Wood’) or the powerful spiritual aphorism in ‘Under Ben Bulben’: “Many times man lives and dies / Between his two eternities.”

This continuity, although at odds with the progressions already noted, helps to explain them. It is the vital thread running through his transitional phase, unifying both early and late Yeats, and provokes fresh inquiry into the so-called ‘political’ poems. Yeats was always a Romantic in the Keatsian or Tennysonian reflective strain, rather than the radical political side. Hid poetry nearly always came imbued with myth, ‘otherness’: he proceeded from the Late Romantic period to form a kind of Romantic Modernism more characteristic of American poets such as Hart Crane. His interest in dream symbolism and automatic writing also placed him with the impressionistic side of Modernism (eg.Surrealism) rather than the harsher or more violent wings (imagism, futurism etc.)

Yeats’ myth-making and political romanticism is lucidly apparent if the use of legend in the ‘Celtic twilight’ phase is put under closer scrutiny. Without placing too much store on biographical details, Celticism (in the hands of Yeats and others) was double-edged. Although it did support national identity and culture, it was also reinforcing imperial stereotyping of the Celts as irrational, feminine and emotional. By using the ancient myth of Ireland, Yeats was implicitly denying that Ireland had a present; by glorifying the peasantry and the oppressed, he was implicitly affirming that Ireland’s place was as a subjugated nation.

This paradox has been noted in a general sense by Edward Said: “to accept nativism is to accept the consequences of imperialism too willingly, to accept the very radical, religious and political divisions imposed on places like Ireland.”[2] Yeats’ is not a radical revolutionary idealism, but an imaginative idealism: running along metaphysical and mythopoetic lines; not historical or political ones.

If this tendency – the tendency to escape into myth – is noted, the later pieces seem less removed from his early career. Yeats peppers his verse with references to former poets, and explicitly assumes the Romantic mantle for himself:

“Some moralist or mythological poet

Compares the solitary soul to a swan;

I am satisfied with that,

Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,

Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.”

(‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’)

He revels in the symbol of the winding stair to mythologise the poet’s ascent to meditate on the turbulence of the world below. Whereas before Ireland’s enchanted past was the myth, now Ireland is yoked to greater schemes. The civil war representing the violence and disillusion of existence to be set against the spiritual purity of the poet in his tower. The events in Ireland are chained to Yeats’ elaborate visions of cyclical history set out in ‘The Second Coming’ and ‘The Gyres.’ The “violence upon the roads” (Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen” and the “rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop” (‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’) are local analogues for the universal “blood-dimmed tide” of ‘The Second Coming’.

Yeats still does celebrate Ireland – it would be fallacy to suggest that the violence of the Civil War sickened his idealism so much he could never face Ireland again with anything but cynicism. However, his engagement was often wary, sometimes ironical – the drinking song of ‘ Come Gather Round Me, Parnellites.’ Neither can it be ignored that he occasionally refashioned his old Celtic schemes, most famously in ‘Under Ben Bulben’ although even here it becomes a segment of a wider schema: “gyres run on / when that greater dream had gone.”

It is particularly interesting, although perhaps not surprising, that Yeats took the events of the civil war and immediately mythologised them. As mentioned above, the black-and-tan conflict becomes an antithetical tension in his meditative poems, or is encompassed into some larger historical cycle. In various pieces, the heroes of Irish independence take their historical place neatly alongside Wolfe Tone and the Celtic warriors. Even before the fate of the Irish Free State had been decided, Yeats had abstracted the civil war and the contemporary crisis into history and myth. It seems that in his poetry, Ireland had to be romantic.

Which helps to explain exactly why Yeats had a seemingly ‘political’ phase. Essentially, for a brief period, the reality of Ireland suddenly became equal to the romantic ideal – a struggle for an ideal and a dream, a forging of identity, a moment of historical crisis, death and beauty side by side. Yeats suddenly found that, for a moment, romantic Ireland seemed to be tentatively existent.

It must be noted that the ‘political’ phase coincided beautifully with the technical and stylistic transition. It would be mere speculation to try to delineate some kind of causal relationship, but it is clear that by 1914 Yeats was searching for some kind of new poetic idiom. His patchy excursions into Imagist style verse in The Green Helmet show he was dissatisfied with simply creating carbon-copy Keatsian Celtic lyrics. It was also about this time that the first dialogue poems began to appear. Emotionally, the tone of the poetry is dejected too. Yeats “grew weary of the sun” and suggests he might have “been content to live” in ‘Words’. ‘No Second Troy’rebukes Gonne: “she filled my days / with misery”, whilst the downbeat ‘Lines written in Dejection’ sees him with “nothing but the embittered sun.”

It is seemingly with the Civil War that Yeats found a way to harness his Romanticism to both modern Ireland and to Modernism itself. The period was one of great variety in style and theme. Culminations of his wistful melancholia appear as late as The Wild Swans of Coole (notably the title poem.) Yet they lie side by side with dubious Modernist outings like ‘The Balloon of the Mind’ and more successful sparse and clean verse like (perhaps supremely) ‘Easter 1916.’

Poems like ‘The Phases of the Moon’ and ‘Ego Dominus Tuus’ anticipate Yeats’ later metaphysical and philosophical bent. And he was still glorifying the Irish peasantry in pieces like ‘The Fisherman.’ As Bloom points out “the two years from late 1915 to late 1917 were the most important of Yeats’ imaginative life.”[3] Surely no accident then, that such a time frame was identical to the opening of the Irish hostilities. A longer transitional period (Responsibilities to Michael Robartes) interlocks uncannily with the end of the Home Rule, the Easter Rising and the course of the Irish Civil War.

Thus it appears the Ireland’s revolution either spurred Yeats’ poetic career on to new ground, or he exploited it to facilitate the transition. In ‘September 1913’, disillusioned by the philistine and listless middle classes (symbolised by the “greasy till”), is among the strongest glorification of the Irish revolutionary tradition:

“they were of a different kind,

The names that stilled your childish play,

They have gone about the world like wind,

But little time had they to pray

For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,

And what, God help us, could they save?”

The second in the triptych of Yeats’ war poems (the other was Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen), was ‘Easter 1916’, where Yeats even questions the viability of art to encapsulate the glory of the revolutionaries: “no, no, not night but death.” This is quite a reversal for an artist who is fiercely aware of the myth-making possibility of poetry, and the importance of the narrative bardic tradition to Irish identity. Yeats is quick to contrast the everyday “polite meaningless words” and the bourgeois world of “eighteenth century houses” with the sacrifice and honour of the 1916 rebels:

“We know their dreams, enough

To know they dreamed and are dead;

And what if excess of love

Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse –

MacDonaugh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse.”

Yet even here, perhaps at the very apex of his political phase, there is doubt – “too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart” and foreboding of an destructive, irreversible change: “changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.”

These two separate images remind us that Yeats was an imaginative (and not political) idealist, and evoke two of his emblematic concerns: stasis, and the dying moment. Both his traditional and Modernist Romanticism are rooted in an intense awareness of time and history. The ‘Celtic twilight’ poems, with their exploration of myth, unrequited love, and sorrow, sensualise and unify the tension between the Romantic polarity of eternity and transience; compare with Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’ or Shelley’s ‘To A Skylark.’ Whilst never fully leaving the shadow of the Romantics – consider “I meditate upon a swallow’s flight” from ‘Coole Park, 1929’ – he also engaged with the Modernist crisis of temporality. The Modernist project to obliterate time has an ally of sorts in Yeats.

One might consider the ‘out of time’ reflections of the tower poems, the instant of rape enlarged into ‘Leda and the Swan’, the a-temporal juxtaposition of historical figures in ‘The Statues’, and of course the apocalyptic visions of ‘The Second Coming’ and ‘The Gyres.’ Note, too, the vast amount of material Yeats wrote on the experiences of aging and death.

It is this obsession with time that reveals Yeats’ true image of Ireland. Ireland, for him at least, had to be romantic Ireland, otherwise it something to be rejected as inferior – philistine, crude, brutal – and inimical to the soul of an imaginative artist. The Ireland of Yeats’ verse was always an Ireland of the past, an Ireland passing away, with one eye on the eternities of legend and history. The images of Ireland changed repeatedly yet the undertow of myth remained the same.

For a brief period around ‘Easter 1916′ – a time that fortuitously coincided with and perhaps enabled Yeats’ technical transition – the reality of present Ireland was seemingly equal to its mythic past. It is ironic that Yeats’ most relevant and political poem was also his greatest act of myth-making. What was really “changed, changed utterly” was not the history of Ireland, but Yeats’ imaginative landscape. Ireland, once again, faded to romantic legend, and was dead and gone. Yeats slotted Pearse as heir to Cuchulain in his mythic schema, and continued his intrinsically timeless and subjective quest, fusing Modernism, Romanticism – and Ireland – into his own poetic idiom.

Dulce et decorum est is written regarding the First World War in the hindsight of the battle of the Somme. This takes a somewhat cynical view on warfare. The soldier by Rupert Brooke on the other hand takes a very strong patriotic feel and this shines through more then anything else.

The soldier paints a picture of English serenity and whereas “dulce et.” portrays Owens anger at the indifference of those at home who continued to propagate lies. You can see the influence of Siegfried Sassoon in this piece. The language is more direct and shocking “guttering, choking, drowning” helps convey the grievance in the air. In the soldier the language is less deplorable and has a feel more of a love poem “her sights and sounds… under an English Heaven” this coupled with the fact that the poem is written as a sonnet reiterates the feel of Love.

Both poems are based on death in Wars. However Brooke paints a more glamorised and less direct picture of death “if I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field…blest by suns of home.” This evokes the idealistic image of a perfect England in a ‘Golden’ age, such as many believe existed immediately prior to the First World War. This does however expose the arrogance that Brooke perhaps had. It places too much importance on his own sacrifices and not on the general sacrifices being made by so many, and on the loss of a way of life, which the war would bring out like many other First World War poets such as ‘Edward Thomas’ and ‘Charles Hamilton Sorely’.

Owen on the other hand almost haunts the reader using fiery vocabulary to help depict the shocking death of a soldier “guttering, Choking, Drowning.” Owen clearly wanted to address the people at home and suggests to them that if, in their worst nightmares, they could re-live this experience, they would not keep repeating that it is good and sweet to die for your country. He is saying that no one who has witnessed these horrors could ever encourage anyone to take part in such a war. He had already pointed out the exhaustion of the soldiers “drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots” helping the reader to visualise the lack of awareness of the soldiers. This certainly will give the reader a much more negative take on the war contaray to the over-hyped propaganda war that those at home believe.

Brooke conveys the image that was painted by the media in Britain at the time of the war and even in death, he believes he cannot remove that sense of pride from him and his passing will not be in vain if, at home in England people are, once again happy and at peace. He feels that by his death he will have given back to England everything, and more, that it gave to him. The happiness and security earned by his sacrifice will buy his eternal peace ” this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind” Owen continues his cynicalism of the war in the last verse using necessarily harsh and wicked language “come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs”. They fling the man into a wagon, because they know there is no point in being gentle- he will soon be dead anyway. The description of his face and eyes “And watch the white eyes writhing in his face” gives him a ghost-like quality. This verse is intended to demonstrate the realism of a violent, unnecessary death; hence it builds to a crescendo of anger, before a final earnest plea to stop the lies.

These two poems could be no more different. ‘The soldier’ is a poem supporting the war in a way not too dissimilar to the way the media in that time promoted it whilst ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ is a pessimistic take on a war that was conveyed by the British media as far from the truth as possible. Owen wanted the British people to know the truth about the war and expressed these feelings best in his poetry. Brooke in contrast went along with the glamorized image that had been portrayed by the media, which wasn’t a fair reflection on the war.

I Died for Beauty, but was Scarce Emily Dickinson I died for Beauty — but was scarce Adjusted in the Tomb When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining room — He questioned softly “Why I failed”? “For Beauty”, I replied — “And I — for Truth — Themself are One — We Brethren, are”, He said — And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night — We talked between the Rooms — Until the Moss had reached our lips — And covered up — our names — Emily Dickerson’s poetry often has similar discussion points (Paton).

In a few of her poems, such as “I Died For Beauty,” she discusses death. However, while death would normally be considered a negative subject, she tends to take it from a different perspective (Chad). In her poem “I Died for Beauty” Emily Dickerson discusses how beauty and truth are one. The message that she gives the readers is that by being true to who you are, and dying with your values intact, you have lived a full life (Paton). When Emily Dickenson writes; “Adjusted in the Tomb When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining room –“

This gives sight to the reader understanding the speaker hardly had time to adjust to her tomb before a man was laid in another tomb right next to hers’. However the word “Tomb”, gives the poem an effect that makes it feel more cold, dark and even alone (Ulynie). This word is also given more emphasis on because the first letter is capitalized, even though it happens to be the last word in the line. When Dickinson writes; “He questioned softly “Why I failed”? ” we can tell that the man asked the speaker why she died, she replied “”For Beauty… ” the reader then finds out that the man claims to have died for trust and he states that trust and beauty are the same thing, and in turn stating the they are both “Brethren”. Dickinson’s usage of term “Brethren” makes the reader suggest that their relationship is much stronger (Apran) than just an acquaintance and that they are both apart of or a member of this one this, which is death. However their companionship strengthens and we can now see this with the uses of the simile “And so, as Kinsmen met a Night, We talked between the Rooms,” which shows how the walls between their tombs is no obstacle for their communication.

Also in the excerpt “Until the Moss had reached our lips — And covered up — our names –“, which acts as an metaphor, suggests that the connection between the two are so strong that the loss of their speech and identity (symbolized by the moss covering up their names) through death, holds no barrier between them (Simran), as they are now deemed as one through their similar situations. This poem follows many of Dickinson’s typical formal patterns—the ABCB rhyme scheme, the rhythmic use of the dash to interrupt the flow helps to promote this rhythm and give way some rhymes (Chad).

For example notice how some lines such as “’For Beauty’, I replied – ‘And I – for truth–… ” has a certain rhythm to it which is emphasized with the use of dashes. Whereas words such as “Tomb” and “Room”, “Brethren” and “Kinsmen” rhyme together and are also capitalized giving more focus to it in order to show its significance and importance. All of this adds in giving the poem its effect that even though it may seem a bit dark and gloomy there is also so a sense of acceptance and belonging.

Task IV Please analyze the theme of the poem, using the speech act hypotheses we have discussed in class. Please pay attention to the change of syntax in the second half of the poem. As the first part of the poem is imperatives and the theme of the poem is elegy, I firstly regard it as an advice or consolation, the poet advising others not to be bothered to find the traces of the person who died.

A common condolence is generally soothing and pacifying, describing how the deceased will rest in peace, however, in this case the poet depicts with very unfavorable words, such as “brittle”, “cold”, and “angry”, which is by no means reassuring or encouraging. Then I guess maybe it is a lament in which the poet uses uncomfortable words to give full vent to his sadness and resentment about his friend’s death.

The second half of the poem changes from imperatives to declarative statements, depicting what happens to the deceased after the death. According to the poet, the deceased still doesn’t get peacefulness but, luckily, becomes an integral part of nature. Taking the two parts into consideration, I think the poem is a lament at the beginning and a placation for both others and the poet himself in the end.

ELEGY Leonard Cohen Do not look for him In brittle mountain streams: They are too cold for any god; And do not examine the angry rivers For shreds of his soft body Or turn the shore stones for his blood; But in the warm salt ocean He is descending through cliffs Of slow green water And the hovering coloured fish Kiss his snow-bruised body And build their secret nests In his fluttering winding-sheet.

“Dulce et Decorum est” is a poem written by Wilfred Owen the famous poet and solider, who fought and died in World War 1, who is considered one of the greatest war poets of his time. The Great War resulted in more than 40 million casualties; soldiers were originally volunteers but were increasingly conscripted into service. War poets such as Owen describe the intense horror of being a solider in the trenches. People who stayed home were blissfully unaware of the sufferings of the soldiers at the front line.

They stayed in their safe homes swallowing the propaganda fed to them by the government, telling the younger generations stories of the honour and bravery of the battlefield. The poem “Dulce et Decorum” addresses the issue of propaganda and the horror suffered. The poem effectively delivers the messages “Don’t lie to the public through propaganda” and “The War was the pointless killing of the innocent. ” The first stanza of the poem is very significant in that it uses alliteration and meter that plunges the reader into the poem.

This and the fact the first stanza is in first person causes the reader to feel as if he or she is experiencing war firsthand. Owen incorporates specific imagery to into the poem in order to introduce the reader to the chaotic world of war. Owen opens by saying that the soldiers are “bent double. ” This statement manages to effectively convey the exhaustion of the soldiers, who have become so disillusioned that they find themselves in a state of purgatorial numbness. Moreover, Owen describes the soldiers as being like “old-beggars.

This a peculiar term to use since most the soldiers were young men when they enlisted; Owen’s reason for using this simile is to demonstrate the way war ages soldiers both physically and emotionally. He also compares the soldiers to “hags” a word that brings to mind disfigurement, and thus could act as a possible reference to the mutilation of bodies so often encountered in war. Additionally, Owen describes the soldiers as being “drunk with fatigue” which seems especially significant because of the suggestion of idea of inebriation as a form of escape from reality, the only method of escape available to them.

The second Stanza of the poem signifies a major transitional point in the poem, breaking down the structure and snapping the reader into a sense of panic that is similar to the fear experienced on the battlefield. Owen opens the stanza with the words “Gas! GAS! ” The capital letters are important because it sets a tone of urgency and panic and makes it seem as if the author is yelling at the reader, just as the soldiers and the superiors would probably be yelling frantically.

Interestingly, Owen describes the soldiers experience as an “ecstasy of fumbling. The use of the word “ecstasy” to describe an undoubtedly horrific experience shows Owens recognition and disgust at the aesthticization of war and death commonly utilized by the government at the time. Owen uses words such as “clumsy”, “stumbling” and “flound’ring” to stress the immediacy and emergency of the state in which the soldiers find themselves. One gets the sense that most, if not all, choreographed instructions and drills of procedures for this kind of emergency are discarded and that the soldiers frantically improvise to do what they can to survive.

Furthermore, the ellipsis in this stanza seems vital in the understanding the poem. This is because it represents the passage of time between the frantic fumbling for the gas masks and Owen’s viewing of a man “drowning” in a “sea” of gas, struggling to survive, the use of “sea” and “drowning” conveys the image of the body thrashing as one would when drowning. The third stanza of the poem is the shortest, but in some ways, it is the most vivid. Owen describes how he sees this man “in all dreams”; this is characteristic of the ongoing trauma that so many soldiers experience not only during the war, but after the war as well.

The narrator describes himself as experiencing this repeatedly, watching this man, yet remaining “helpless”. This illustrates Owen’s frustration, and perhaps guilt, at his not being able to do anything to save this man. Owen goes on to say that the man “plunges at me”; the man knows he is going to die, because try as he might he is aware that there is nothing to be done. It is clear that Owen is haunted by this image based on his vivid description of the man as “guttering, choking and drowning.

The man slow and futile struggle to survive continues to disturb Owen for long after the incident has passed. The fourth and final stanza of the poem marks the first time that Owen employs the second person, by using the word “you. ” He directly addresses and actively draws the reader into the poem. He also continues with his use of descriptive imagery by describing the man as having “white eyes writhing in his face. ” As the man leaves life and enters death his eyes once full of expression now carry numbness and desensitization.

Owen goes on to say that the soldiers have “innocent tongues” to further portray the injustice of soldiers killed in battle and the governments’ evil for allowing the war to continue. The last stanza, especially the ending, read as if it is a final plea to the reader. Owen says that if the reader were able to truly experience the horrors of fighting in battle, he or she would never promote or glorify war to the future generations. This plea represents a reworking of the title of the poem, which literally translates from Latin into “How sweet it is to die for your country.

If when reading the poem the reader interprets the title literally, by the end of the poem it is clear that Owen uses the title as a tool for making an ironic statement instead. Throughout the poem the reader is shown vivid imagery describing war which can effectively fill one with anger, pity, sadness or even satisfaction that at least someone is speaking the truth. For me personally it makes me sad. “Dulce et Decorum est” is tragic. Owen speaking from first hand experience of a soldier sent to the front line, hurls pain in to the reader’s face, causing the reader to feel both pity and guilt for the crimes of war.

The poem ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ is a poem which shows us the horrors of war. It shows us how innocent lives are being wasted on a war. The poem tells us about how the poet feels about war.

The first stanza tells us about the condition of the soldiers. It shows us that the soldiers are sick, tired and are not aware of themselves. It also tells us that the soldiers were in bad condition. They did not care about the shells that dropped behind them. In the first line the soldiers are compared in a simile to old beggars. This implies that they look shabby, which is not the image of soldiers in bright shiny uniforms, which would be in keeping with the glorious image of war. The line has a slow pace with no sound described, which is also a contrast to the image of war, as people at home might expect the soldiers to be marching along at a brisk pace. The second line continues this them as it compares the soldiers to hags, which are very like beggars. It tells you that the soldiers are knock kneeded and coughing, which implies a very low morale.

In the second stanza, the poet has written about a gas attack that he has witnessed. This stanza tells us about the confusion and panic, which arises when the soldiers’ lives are in immediate danger. The pace of this verse is a lot quicker in order to demonstrate this, and also provides a contrast to the previous verses as it is written in the present tense to make it seem more real, whereas the first verse is written in the perfect tense, which makes it seem more distant. During the gas attack, many soldiers managed to get their gas helmets on time. But one soldier could not make it. He was yelling and stumbling as the gas overcare him. The poet has seen the unfortunate man die a slow and painful death.

The third stanza is short. It expresses the poet’s fears and nightmares he has because of the dying man reaching his hand out for help. But Wilfred Owen was helpless. The poet tells us that the dying man was guttering, choking and drowning as the gas made its way through his lungs.

The fourth stanza is telling us a little bit about what the soldiers did to the dead soldier. They flung him in the back of a wagon. His condition was still bad. There was blood coming out from his mouth and his face was hanging in bad shape. The poet then tells his ‘friend’ that it is not right to tell keen and young soldiers eager for glory that ‘ It is a good and noble thing to die for your country’ as it is a lie. Moreover, the last verse is a plea to the reader to renounce their opinion that dying for your country is sew and honourable. Wilfred Owen is saying that if the reader was there, and saw this man dying in the back of the wagon then they would not tell the old Lie. Owen, by his graphic description of the man’s death, is intending to shock the reader into believing they have been tricked by the Old Lie i.e. it is good to die for your country, and make them think more deeply about the values of war and how they can become heroes.

Wilfred Owen is creating a horrific picture of how bad war is. He has done this by making use of similes.

In the first stanza, Owen describes the exhaustion of the soldiers by saying:

“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks”

In this quote we can see that Owen is telling us that the soldiers are too tired to walk properly and that they can hardly stand up. He re-enforces his words by saying:

“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots”

This is giving us a vivid image of how tired and ill the soldiers are from war. To add to the atmosphere of depression, the ‘haunting flares’ imply that the scene is taking place at night, as flares are not visible in the daytime. The fact that the flares are ‘haunting’ adds to the misery of the soldiers, as it could be that they are remembering past horrific incidents involving the flares that haunt them. The ‘distant rest’ in line four could mean that the soldiers are going to sleep for the night, but they will not be able to sleep because of the poor conditions. The word’ trudge’ implies that they are walking with difficulty, and slows down the line, which indicates the slowness of the soldiers’ walk. The alliteration in the fifth line emphasises what Wilfred Owen is saying. It makes the metaphor ‘men marched asleep’ seem more real and holds the line together over the full stop. ‘Men limping blood shod’ emphasises their predicament and how different it is to the glorious battle they had expected. The two lines in this verse create the impression that the soldiers are somehow in a daze and do not hear sounds fully. It is as if they have become isolated within themselves.

Their illness is further emphasized when the poet says:

“… coughing like hags…”

From these sentences in the first stanza, we can imagine how tired and worn-out the soldiers must have been due to the war they are forced to fight.

Wilfred Owen is also making use of metaphors to strengthen the lines of his poem. In the second stanza, Owen tells us about a dying man when he inhaled the gas.

“But someone was yelling out and stumbling

And floundering like a man in fire or lime”

From this quote, we get a picture of how the dying man felt just as he had inhaled the smoke.

Wilfred Owen has made use of other literary techniques such as Direct speech, Alliteration and Onomatopoeia.

In the second stanza, Owen has made use of direct speech to give the reader a realistic feeling about what is happening in the poem.

“Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!”

The poet has also made use of Alliteration. In the third stanza, the poet says:

“Behind the wagon we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face”

Here the poet is telling us about the state in which the dying man was.

The poet has also made use of two special features, enjambement and caesura. Wilfred Owen has made use of enjambement very often from the second stanza. This increases the pace of the poem which gives the reader an inside look into how fast people had to work at war. On the other hand, Owen has also made use of caesura. This slows down the pace of the poem and allows the reader to think about what the poet is saying. In the third stanza, Owen says:

“His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin”

Here the poet is letting the reader to know how the dying man looked like after he inhaled the gas.

In the poem ‘Dulce et Decorum est’, there are four verses with 28 lines. Each verse has a number of lines that vary in every verse. The poem does not have a definite rhyme but mostly it goes like a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d and so on but this pattern is disrupted a little bit in the later part of the poem. Stanza 3 is short as it sums up the nightmares Wilfred Owen is going through. Since the two lines are in the middle of much longer verses, the reader’s eyes get attracted to those lines.

The poem ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ was written by Wilfred Owen during the First World War. In 1914 the First World War broke out on a largely innocent world, a world that still associated warfare with glorious cavalry charges and the noble pursuit of heroic ideals. This was the world’s first experience of modern mechanised warfare. As the months and years passed, each bringing increasing slaughter and misery, the soldiers became increasingly disillusioned. Many of the strongest protests made against the war were made through the medium of poetry by young men horrified by what they saw. One of these poets was Wilfred Owen.

World War I, military conflict, from 1914 to 1918, that began as a local European war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia on July 28, 1914; was transformed into a general European struggle by Germany’s declaration of war against Russia on August 1, 1914; and eventually became a global war involving 32 nations. The immediate cause of the war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was the assassination on June 28, 1914, at Sarajevo in Bosnia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; now in Bosnia and Herzegovina), of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir-presumptive to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones, by Gavrilo Princip, a Serb nationalist. The fundamental causes of the conflict, however, were rooted deeply in the European history of the previous century, particularly in the political and economic policies that prevailed on the Continent after 1871, the year that marked the emergence of Germany as a great world power.

The living conditions for the soldiers were terrible during the First World War. Many died due to diseases, epidemics and injuries caused through battle. Sometimes, the soldiers had no ammunition to fight with at all and hence were left helpless. Living conditions were as bad. Many had no proper shelter, or clothing. Wilfred Owen had made these conditions a reality in his poem. The vividness of the poem gives us an impression of how bad the conditions must’ve been for the soldiers during the war. Moreover he is saying this because he feels the soldiers are giving their life for nothing. Therefore he is stressing on the terrible conditions the soldier were living and fighting in.

Wilfred Owen has written negative account of his feelings for war. He has written about the tiredness of the soldiers when he says:

“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; drunk even to the hoots”

In this quote we can see that Wilfred Owen is trying to tell us that the soldiers were very tired. This tells us that Wilfred Owen is giving us a negative impression of war

This poem was written by Wilfred Owen, who was a soldier in the First World War. He therefore gives a very vivid account of what it was like to be there, as he has had first- hand experience. The title of the poem means ‘it is sweet and honourable’, and the phrase is continued at the end of the poem…’to die for your country.’ Just before this is stated at the end of the poem, Wilfred Owen chooses to write’ The Old Lie.’ This tells us he does not believe this statement to be true. The poem is filled with horrible stories about what really happened, and so Wilfred Owen is saying how can all of this suffering be sweet and proper?

In my opinion, I do not like the poem very much. It gives a very horrific image of war. Although Wilfred Owen is right about ‘Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori’ I still think that the poem is written quite harshly.

The language used by the poet is not bad but the content is. The examples that Wilfred Owen has given us of warfare are very horrific. A man drowning in a gas of poisonous gas, a group of soldiers in ill condition etc, all this reflects upon the horrific accounts of warfare. If the poet were trying to stress his point through non-horrific examples, then the poem would’ve been a lot more enjoyable. But that doesn’t mean I am criticizing the poet. Needless to say the poem is very well written. Its what the poet feels about warfare, which obviously I wouldn’t criticize that at all as it is the poet’s opinion.

A post war poem, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ snatches at the opportunity to put an abrupt end to political problems worldwide, and to avoid any sort of future World Wars. Poet Wilfred Owen shapes this poem around war and its consequences; this is a poem of deep, twisted, emotive imagery portrayed through intelligent poetic devices.

The opening stanza draws the reader into the proverbial trench, ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks’ – an example of accessible imagery, used through a simile. The following lines continue to create the atmosphere of war: ‘Coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge’, an unpleasant yet easily understandable occurrence. ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ practically marches the reader to war by emphasising soldiers’ hardships at war; travelling to a ‘distant rest’, and ‘men march asleep’, an effective metaphoric phrase, elaborated upon straight after, Owen states soldiers would be ‘drunk with fatigue’, and even after they’d ‘lost their boots’, they would ‘limp on, blood-shod, all blind’ on this seemingly eternal and insignificant march. Wilfred Owen will have captivated any reader by now to see the poem through to it’s end.

This poem is of a standard much higher than Owen’s other work, as well as many of its time. ‘An ecstasy of fumbling’, ‘misty panes and think green light’ and ‘a green sea’ are all first-rate adjectival phrases portraying further visions of war. ‘And floundering like a man in fire or lime’ paints a very descriptive and hideously detailed picture. This stanza’s flow is excellent and the rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter really keeping a solid rhythm going.

In a small break-off from the second stanza, we have stanza three, just two lines, acting as an anti climax, the predecessor to the final twelve line stanza; this couple of lines links with the previous stanza via its rhyme scheme, it ends with the emotive, meaningful line ‘He plunges at me, guttering, choking drowning’ – repetition of ‘drowning’ through rhyme, emphasis used to a great effect.

This draws us into the ultimate chapter of ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’. Stanza four is littered with intelligent and effective poetic devices in the way of similes and existential imagery. For instance ‘Like a devil’s sick of sin’, ‘obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud’, two lines, and three similes manage to highlight the repulsive nature of war. Yet more simple yet informative adjectives and verbs paint pictures in the readers mind – ‘Watch the white eyes writhing in his face’, sickening yet beautiful.

This is followed by ‘If you could see … with such high zest’ – a five line cut from the stanza illuminates the poem with brilliance. ‘The blood coming from the froth-corrupted lungs’, ‘obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud’ and ‘vile, incurable sores’ are three examples of emotive, negatively charged poetry. The poem then draws into its infamous close: ‘Dulce et decorum est … Pro patria mori’ – Latin, simply translated to “It’s sweet and fitting to die for your country”. This is after playing down war for four convincing and vibrant stanzas. He dubs the saying an ‘old lie’, a bold yet shockingly debatable declaration.

This ending rounds off the poem impeccably; ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ rhymes in alternating couplets and uses iambic pentameter in the right places, it’s a near-perfect formula not to be missed out on. The poem begins with an introduction to trench warfare and goes on stating the hardships of war and life as a soldier followed by a poetic patch of high-quality description, it proceeds to finish drowning you in a sea of soldiers’ sorrow.

In a moment of bias, I have to input my own opinion on this piece; it is one of the more interesting pieces of poetry, not too bogged-down, the rhythm throughout the second stanza in particular is excellent. The poetic devices incorporated are done so as effectively as I’ve ever read, all the similes and metaphors already mentioned in this appreciation fully validate my statement. At the same time the poem doesn’t overdo use of imagery and intelligent language, to the point it is so abstract it makes difficult, complicated reading. ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ provides good balance, making it accessible and easy to relate to. Overall it’s an impeccable, negatively charged protest against war, which leaves the timeless question: “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori” – Well?