Dulce et Decorum Est

Perhaps the greatest war poem of all time. I love the last line: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Or, how sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country.
I don't know how much I agree with it though. The poem is clearly critical and pessimistic towards war, which I agree with, but at the same time, there is no greater hero than a veteran of war. My attitude towards war is equally as undecided as my attitude towards capital punishment. Sometimes, I think that "an eye for an eye" is the proper punishment for murderers, but who has the right to decide who lives and who dies? Besides God, that is. I can't think of anything more inhumane than locking someone away and letting them sit there and rot, just waiting to die. But then again, they weren't humane to their victims, so why should they deserve any better? I don't know. I just don't know. Anyway, today is Jon's service at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. I guess I'm feeling all patriotic. Even though this poem is hardly supportive of the armed forces, it is indeed the greatest poem of war ever written.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
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, 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.