“The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”
Dulce et Decorum Est (1917)
Context: 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: [[w:Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori|Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.]]
Context: 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: [[w:Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori|Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori. ]]
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Wilfred Owen 23
English poet and soldier (1893-1918) 1893–1918Related quotes
“A lie never lives to be old.”
Acrisius, fragment 59.
Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in — [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 157, 0-517-53502-5]
“An old dissembler who lived out his lie
Lies here as if he did not fear to die.”
"An Epitaph for Anyone", 1942 The Poems of J. V. Cunningham, edited by Timothy Steele, Ohio University Press/Swallow Press, 1997, ISBN 0-804-00997-X
Epigrams
“Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.”
Source: Romeo and Juliet
Variant: Old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft.
Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 81
"The Pit of the Serpent" (1929)
Context: The men on the Dauntless have disliked the Sea Girl's crew ever since our skipper took their captain to a cleaning on the wharfs of Zanzibar--them being narrow-minded that way. They claimed that the old man had a knuckle-duster on his right, which is ridiculous and a dirty lie. He had it on his left.
