Summary

“Dulce et Decorum Est” begins with an octave, or stanza made of eight lines, describing exhausted soldiers marching away from battle to turn in for the night. Their postures were like that of “old beggars under sacks” (1) and they were “coughing like hags” (2) as they left behind the “haunting flares” (3) of battle. The speaker details the brutal conditions of the retreat, in which “Men marched asleep” (5) and many had to go “blood-shod” (6) because they lost their shoes. He says they had all become physically impaired, “lame” (6) and “blind” (6). Furthermore, they were “Drunk with fatigue” (7) and so did not hear “the hoots / Of gas-shells dropping softly behind” (7-8).

The next stanza, a six-line sestet, shows the soldiers’ reaction to the gas attack. “An ecstasy of fumbling” (9) to get the gas masks on “just in time” (10) gave way to the realization that “someone still was yelling...