I've a little wet home in a trench,

There's a dead cow close by

With her feet in towards the sky

And she gives off a terrible stench.

Underneath, in the place of a floor,

There's a mass of wet mud and some straw,

But with shells dropping there,

There's no place to compare,

With my little wet home in the trench.

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in times,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And floundering like a man in fire or lime -

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

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 gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

Obscene as cancer

Bitten as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent from some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

This is the bomb that fell on the house that Jack built

This is the Hun that dropped the bomb,

that fell on the house that Jack built.

This is the gun that killed the Hun,

that dropped the bomb,

that fell on the house that Jack built.

For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,

Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:

And the haunted gap in your mind filled with thoughts that flow

Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,

Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same -- and War's a bloody game.

Have you forgotten yet?...

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz --

The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?

Do you remember the rats; and the stench

Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench --

And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?

Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack --

And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you

As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?

Do you remember the stretcher cases lurching back

With dying eyes and lolling heads - those ashen-grey

Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...

Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.