Owen's poems, published only after his death, along with his letters from the front line to his mother, are perhaps the most powerful and vivid accounts of the horror of war to emerge from the First World War.

In one of his most well known poems, 'Dulce et Decorum est' Owen challenges the famous Latin saying by Horace which means that it is sweet and becoming to die for one's country. Owen wrote this as he wanted to provoke compassion at its deepest levels for

The panic of the second stanza is made somewhat stronger by the awkwardness of the rhythm and this adds to the fact that it is difficult to fit the 'clumsy helmets'. The participles 'fumbling', 'stumbling', 'floundering', 'drowning' help to reinforce the sense of muddle and confusion. There is an 'ecstasy of fumbling', as the soldiers are so tired that they cannot co-ordinate themselves properly to put on their helmets quickly enough. The gas - probably phosgene or mustard gas - is virtually opaque and so seems like a 'green sea' and '…through the misty panes' Owen can only watch in passive horror.

The final part emphasises the bitterness created by war as the body of the victim was 'flung' into the 'wagon'. The Latin phrase at the end is fully integrated into the poem, rhyming effortlessly with the preceding two lines - 'zest' / 'est' and 'glory' / 'mori'. The object of this poem was to make it impossible for the phrase 'Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori' ever to be taken seriously again, which I think Owen has fulfilled.

In the short third stanza Owen feels personally responsible an

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