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, 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.

My subject is war, and the pity of war.

All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.

The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

I don't ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry?

Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

Ambition may be defined as the willingness to receive any number of hits on the nose.