And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
Pro patria mori.
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.