With a dull, dead throb of syllables that virtually reaches out and grabs the auditor, Owens writes: "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." (it is sweet and right to die for your country)

Owens makes clear to the reader knows of which he speaks, because the poem was written, as its inscription states, that it was penned during the war itself on the front lines. Owens setting of the scene of the marching soldiers where "Many had lost their boots / but limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; / Drunk with fatigue;...
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