Dulce et Decorum
DULCE ET DECORUM
Above brave soldiers’ graves green spears grow high,
crops wave gold ears, they’ve witnessed years flow by.
Poppy enclave scene: tears keen, winds sigh,
here rinse entrenched biers clean – who heeds their cry?
30 July 1977
robi03_0135_robi03_0000 XXX_DJN
poem by Jonathan Robin

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Pro Patria Mori
World War 1 Soldier Tailem Bend by Illawarrian
Pro patria mori
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
For generations
we've sold these goods
to young boys
who burn for glory.
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Indeed, how sweet,
Pray tell
Poppy covered warrior.
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
How sweet was the Somme?
Such little ground
was gained with
half a generation gone.
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
When weapons
far outpace the men
what an empty word
is glory.
poem by John F. McCullagh

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Years of Tears
Years of tears for no ears to hear, lonely for years am I
Years of tears for no ears to hear in silence they dropp and die
Years of tears, hidden deep, I cannot weep, nor cry.
Years of tears, for many fears of dying alone, I sigh.
Years of tears which no one hears as many years go by.
Years of tears in the lonely sky, my tears grow wings and fly.
Years of tears, my smile shines, through its little lines, I lie.
Years of tears, my somber peers through my melancholy eye
Tears of tears, Years of Years, in my soul, I tie.
Years of tears for no ears to hear my tears weep goodbye….
poem by Kevin Michael Murphy

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I saw men
I saw men wetting their pants
when the first bullets fly past them
in their first contact with the enemy
and I saw men,
shot out of their military boots
and lying broken and covered with blood.
I saw men burnt to ashes
by white phosphorous
in a shot out Ratel IFV
and I saw men
left limbless by landmines.
I saw men making the best
of what life dealt them
and fighting to survive
against the odds
and gaining victory,
against a outnumbering foe
and still believing the old lie:
Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori
[References: Dulce et decorum est by Wilfred Owen. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.=> 'It is sweet and right to die for the homeland”]
poem by Gert Strydom

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Keep It Clean
Keep it clean.
Every crack your packing.
Soap it up and down.
Rinse that dirt away.
Keep it clean.
Every crack your packing.
Soap it up and down.
Rinse that dirt away.
So hard they've tried to reflect perfection.
A wholesome outlook,
With good deeds done they do!
They want to project a godlike self righteousness.
With wings adorned and hymns sung!
Angelic voices from everyone,
Harmonizing,
In collective united bliss.
But the truth about this...
There is BS that sits within their midst,
And not one of them can resist
An addicting sniff!
Since they are all full of it!
Keep it clean.
Every crack your packing.
Soap it up and down.
Rinse that dirt away.
Keep it clean.
Every crack your packing.
Soap it up and down.
Rinse that dirt away.
Something kept stinking...
From fat greasy meat.
Suited and smoking cigars,
Chartering planes with high profiled stars.
And posing with those who piloted...
The sucking up of all resources.
As admirers rejoiced!
Thinking they heard 'voices' from beyond...
'You too could live like this!
We'll make sure of it! '
Keep it clean.
Every crack your packing.
Soap it up and down.
Rinse that dirt away.
Keep it clean.
Every crack your packing.
Soap it up and down.
Rinse that dirt away.
Screwing fools!
'Keep it clean! '
That's what they do best!
'Keep the scene serene.
Deodorize the stench that leaks.
Protect that image.
And hide the blood left...
To leave as expected on urban streets! '
Keep it clean.
Every crack your packing.
Soap it up and down.
Rinse that dirt away.
Keep it clean.
Every crack your packing.
Soap it up and down.
Rinse that dirt away.
By the time it surfaces...
There will be nothing left to squander.
And the fools we duped with treason,
Will have nothing left to value...
And very little to say!
Keep it clean.
Every crack your packing.
Soap it up and down.
Rinse that dirt away.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar

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Memorial Day
"Dulce et decorum est"
The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray.
The roses blossom white and red
On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
And martial music cleaves the sky.
Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom and the Right.
May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.
In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace . . . Who brought a sword.
poem by Joyce Kilmer

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O My Bangladesh Of Gold - Original By Rabindranath Tagore
O my mom!
O my Bangladesh!
O my Bangladesh of Gold!
I love you mom I love you.
O my mom! Your sky and your air
Attract me like a flute-player!
O my mom!
O my Bangladesh!
O my Bangladesh of Gold!
I love you mom I love you.
O my mom!
In spring in mango gardens
I have smelt holy fragrance!
O my mom!
O my Bangladesh!
O my Bangladesh of Gold!
I love you mom I love you.
O my mom!
What have I seen in autumn?
Fields full of crops so handsome!
O my mom!
O my Bangladesh!
O my Bangladesh of Gold!
I love you mom I love you.
O the beauty and the shadow
Where my affection and love grow
Under the banyan trees and
On the shores of rivers that flow!
O my mom!
Your words are sweetest to me!
If you look pale and gloomy:
I shed tears in sympathy.
O my mom!
O my Bangladesh!
O my Bangladesh of Gold!
I love you mom I love you.
poem by Asif Andalib

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Green Soldiers
The Armies marched with banging drums
That made ill the streams, made black the dreams.
The Armies marched with cracking horns,
Each soldier robed in robes of green.
With green swords they cut her down,
Greyed her hairs and dimmed her smiles.
Their drums rung around her ears,
Their trophies hung within her tears.
But, in the night Turning Tide
Brought Light, who shone to crack the ice
That Time had made cold and hard
Around each green soldiers heathen heart.
Whispers. Whispers in my ears and in the hills.
'The ice will crack; the blood will flow',
The ice did crack, the blood ran cold
And drowned each green soldiers heathen soul.
We stood just to watch them die,
Let them bleed until their hearts bled dry.
Alas! things could never be the same
With her smiles so dim and her hairs so grey.
poem by Floyd Zimmerman

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There Once Was A Man...
There once was a man, they called brave
Who lived in a hole, called a grave...
Well, being the host
To many a ghost,
He arranged a big bash, called a rave
There once was a man, called a knave
Who lived in a hole, called a cave...
Not being too keen
About keeping it clean...
Well, he took on a wife, called a slave
There once was a man with a stave
Who lived in a holy enclave...
Maintaining a grin
While absolving the sin,
He assessed wicked tales and forgave
There once was a monk with a wave
Who wanted a head with a shave...
The barber was such
That she cut back too much
Thereby leaving his globus concave
There once was a man in the nave,
Although pious he could not behave...
They paid him no mind,
'Caus his name was maligned,
Simply being a sinner to save
There once was a man quite depraved
A voluptuous life was thus craved...
Well, continuous sin
Ended doing him in -
On his tombstone they carved ‘Misbehaved'
poem by Terry O'Leary

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Premature
Pale berries fade to bright
Leaves green whisper autumn
Creasing brown and crisping - falling,
July parts with Summer sudden as fright.
Hedges swelling berries threaten indigo
Fallen Summer lightly crunches underfoot
Lazy spotted silk flits amongst the cabbages,
As rain drips and autumn winds blow.
Harvest dawns soon but now
It’s colours, winds and crops grow,
Fattening Moon and Sun to lingering orange
Swelling cold to comfort woe.
28-7-05
poem by Laura Russell

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Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori
In 'Dulce Decorum Est' grim realities has Owen told?
Images he witness bore cut into nerve retina of eyeballs?
“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 tired, outstripped Five Nines that dropped behind.”
Wilfred was a conscientious objector, who never believed
in war. Owen believed he had no right to protest against war,
if he had never fought in it. Wilfred wrote realistic anti-war
poems. “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a protest against war.
The lie “Dulce et Decorum Est pro patria mori” Owen denounces
declaring it is not sweet and honourable to die for your country.
Stark grim dark is contrast between false lie and truth reality
powerfully in an account of friend dying soldier demonstrated
Symptoms of chlorine or phosgene gas are correctly described
The 'misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw
him drowning' are accurate descriptions of poison gas covering battlefield Owen haunted by agony memory horrific deaths declares 'In all my dreams
before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning' attests. Words 'gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs describes, gassed lungs filled with fluid, producing similar effects, as when a person drowns
in water. ‘Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling’ intones
instant cinematic descriptive reality, suddenly reader you must bear witness, to secret scientific weapons research horrors humankinds worst deeds
“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 (Owen declares)
My friend, you would not tell with such zest
The old lie: Dulce et Decorum Est pro patria mori”
because it is not sweet nor honourable to die such deaths
poem by Terence George Craddock

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The soldiers fought
The soldiers fought a fight, and went for us,
They went not thinking of themselves, and no fuss;
Some were injured. Yet in such agony they fought,
And some carried back to safety, while the enemy was sought.
Those soldiers were so very brave, fighting in our place,
Marching altogether, In order and without grace;
They never knew if they'd get back home at all,
All they did was fighting to win, the problem wasn't small.
And a lot of those brave soldiers, lost arms and legs, it's so,
But some very brave soldiers, where they died we don't know;
And this is why the legacy, we remember them, at set of sun,
And thank all these brave soldiers, for the good that was done.
poem by Margaret Haig

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Roses, Rubies, and Strawberries
Mi fantasma dulce
Send me a rose
This Valentine's Day
A single red
Reminds me of
The crimson light
We shared
Years ago
Mi fantasma dulce
Send me a ruby
This Valentine's Day
A single red
Reminds me of
The sparkling passion
We shared
Years ago
Mi fantasma dulce
Send me a strawberry
This Valentine's Day
A single red
Reminds me of
The earthen treats
We shared
Years ago
Mi fantasma dulce
Where did all those red years go?
Of
Roses
Rubies
And
Straw berries
Porque
Es día de San Valentín
Y tú no estás
Aquí
poem by Catman Cohen

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Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.
Wilfred Owen in Poem: Dulce et Decorum est

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Mangees, Mangees, Mangees...
A new order is ours,
A new birth to the old
And we have ceremony.
A garden with no green,
White flowers grow on a bed of
Yellow sunlight.
The cliched regiment of red and white stripes
Have lost any meaning - black and blue drift
Into the past.
The long lost past.
Everything's gone green.
Growth, loving laughter with no emotion.
Carefree happiness lost in decaying childhood
While living childhood has tears
Brimming on every eye.
Buttercups flow everywhere -
Drifting in memories,
Floating on ponds,
Singing around my head.
Sunlight illuminates even the eve
linger by my side today.
Tomorrow become a forest
Put the world in a teacup
- it wouldn't notice.
But we'll change seats forever
And the dishes will always be clean
Tea for two
I am one
Are you -
happy?
(7 July 1982)
poem by Jeff Hobbs

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Silence
Thousands of thousands of hushed years ago,
Out on the edge of Chaos, all alone
I stood on peaks of vapor, high upthrown
Above a sea that knew nor ebb nor flow,
Nor any motion won of winds that blow,
Nor any sound of watery wail or moan,
Nor lisp of wave, nor wandering undertone
Of any tide lost in the night below.
So still it was, I mind me, as I laid
My thirsty ear against mine own faint sigh
To drink of that, I sipped it, half afraid
'Twas but the ghost of a dead voice spilled by
The one starved star that tottered through the shade
And came tiptoeing toward me down the sky.
poem by James Whitcomb Riley

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The Surrender
HERE, in the new day's golden splendour —
Headlands pushing their foreheads forward —
Sweet is the surfer's glad surrender
To the will of the wave, as it rushes shoreward.
Nought in his ears but the breaker's thunder,
Arrowing on through the surf he flies,
Foam about him and clean sands under,
Over him arching the radiant skies.
Yielding himself as a toy to the ocean,
Locked and mute in its fierce embraces,
Thrilled and filled with the joy of motion,
Limbs outstretched, through the swirl he races.
Here, in the gold day's new-born splendour,
Sea winds sighing in tree and cave,
Sweet it is in a glad surrender
Thus to yield to the will of the wave.
poem by Roderic Quinn

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The Cool Web
Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.
But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.
There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.
But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.
poem by Robert Graves

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Song- I'd be a Fairy King
Oh, I'd be a Fairy King,
With my vassals brave and bold;
We'd hunt all day,
Through the wildwood gay,
In our guise of green and gold;
And we'd lead such a merry, merry life,
That the silly, toiling bee,
Would have no sweet
In its dull retreat,
So rich as our frolic glee.
I'd be a Fairy King,
With my vassals brave and bold;
We'd hunt all day,
Through the wildwood gay,
In our guise of green and gold.
At night, when the moon spake down,
With her bland and pensive tone,
The fairest Queen
That ever was seen
Would sit on my pearly throne;
And we'd lead such a merry, merry life,
That the stars would laugh in show'rs
Of silver light,
All the summer night,
To the airs of the passing Hours.
I'd be a Fairy King,
With my vassals brave and bold;
We'd hunt all day
Through the wildwood gay,
In our guise of green and gold.
We'd talk with the dainty flow'rs,
And we'd chase the laughing brooks;
My merry men,
Through grove and glen,
Would search for the mossy nooks;
And we'd be such a merry, merry band,
Such a lively-hearted throng,
That life would seem
But a silvery dream
In the flowery Land of Song.
I'd be a Fairy King,
With my vassals brave and bold;
We'd hunt all day,
Through the wildwood gay,
In our guise of green and gold.
poem by Charles Sangster

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The Land Is Green
The land is green
It is just green
Do not see any other colour
That will make you not to cultivate
The land is green
It must be green
Avoid the deceit of the unpatriotic
They have only their interest at heart
The land is green
It will remain green
Speak not with the double minded.
Nothing positive will come from them
The land is green
For our crops to grow
For our next generation to feed
Our land is meant to be green
poem by Chika Ogbonna

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Let The Tears Dry
Let the tears dry and bring back your smile,
Hear the mountains cry.
The tears will grow where you laid your tears,
Rivers will flow, rivers will flow,
Flow where you rest your fears.
A soul has fled when the blood was shed,
A soul that cared for life so deeply.
The memory will grow in us
And make you and I a family.
song performed by by Yoko Ono

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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