DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares(rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines) we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest(a camp away from the front line where soldiers might rest for a few days) 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(the noise made by the shells rushing through the air )

Of tired, outstripped(outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle) Five-Nines(5.9 calibre explosive shells) that dropped behind.

GAS!(poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned) Gas! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets(the early name for gas masks) just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And floundering like a man in fire or lime(a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue)...

Dim, through the misty panes(the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks) 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(Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat when choking, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling), 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(normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew usually green and bubbling. Here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth)

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea)

To children ardent(keen) for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

•    Note :  "Dulce et Decorum Est" is "Sweet and fitting it is." The translation of "Pro patria mori" is
  "To die for one's country."

     Wilfred Owen 's poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" was written during his World War I experience. Owen, an officer in the British Army, deeply opposed the intervention of one nation into another. His poem explains how the British press and public comforted themselves with the fact that, awful that is was, all the young men dying in the war were dieing noble, heroic deaths. The reality was quite different: They were dieing obscene and terrible deaths. Owen wanted to throw the war in the face of the reader to illustrate how vile and inhumane war really is. He explains in his poem that people will encourage you to fight for your country, but, in reality, fighting for your country is simply sentencing yourself to an unnecessary death. The breaks throughout the poem indicate the clear opposition that Owen strikes up. The title of the poem means "Sweet and Fitting it is," and then Owen continues his poem by ending that the title is, in fact, a lie. Aligned with powerful imagery and vast irony, the author was eventually killed in the very war he opposed. Before his death, he was thought to be one of the best poets of the Twentieth century.
War is not worth it, as Owen proves with the lie spread across the world: Sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country.
(Sarcasm)