Text 67

Eleven years after the fall of Troy,

We, old men – some of us nearly forty –

Met and talked on the sunny rampart

Over our wine, while the lizards scuttled

In dusty grass, and the crickets chirred.

Some bared their wounds;

Some spoke of the thirst, dry in the throat,

And the heart-beat, in the din of battle;

Some spoke of intolerable sufferings,

The brightness gone from their eyes

And the gray already thick in their hair.

And I sat a little apart

From the garrulous talk and old memories,

And I heard a boy of twenty

Say petulantly to a girl, seizing her arm:

'Oh, come away, why do you stand there

Listening open-mouthed to the talk of old men?

Haven't you heard enough of Troy and Achilles?

Why should they bore us for ever

With an old quarrel and the names of dead men

We never knew, and dull forgotten battles?'

And he drew her away,

And she looked back and laughed

As he spoke more contempt of us

Being now out of hearing.

And I thought of the graves of desolate Troy

And the beauty of many young men now dust,

And the long agony and how useless it all was.

And the tank still clashed about me

Like the meeting of blade and blade.

And as they two moved away

He put an arm about her, and kissed her;

And afterwards I heard their gay distant laughter.

And I looked at the hollow cheeks

And the weary eyes and the grey-streaked heads

Of the old men – nearly forty – about me;

And I too walked away

In an agony of helpless grief and pity.

The main character in Aldington's novel, George Winterbourne, is killed on November 11, Armistice Day. A young man in flesh and blood, poet Wilfred Owen, was killed a week before Armistice Day.

Owen is possibly the best-known English poet of the First World War. He refused to accept the romantic patriotism of many poets. Owen wrote that the war is fought by real men who bleed and die, and he describes the idea that Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori – it is sweet and honorable to die for one's country – as 'the old Lie' (Text 68).