Dulce et Decorum Est
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40 free Dulce Et Decorum Est trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est' is one of the most widely taught poems in English. In 28 lines it follows a column of worn-out British soldiers caught by a gas attack on the march, then turns on the people at home who spoke of war as something noble. This quiz covers what students and readers are asked about most: the images and word choices line by line, the meaning of the Latin title and where it comes from, the poem's form and metre, and the story behind it, from the hospital where Owen drafted it to the people who saw it into print after his death. It suits anyone revising the poem for an English literature exam, teachers who want a quick class check, and readers of First World War poetry who want to see how much they remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01Which Daily Mail writer of recruiting verse was the first dedicatee of 'Dulce et Decorum Est'?
Jessie Pope
Jessie Pope was named in the first draft's dedication, which Owen softened to 'a certain Poetess' and then dropped altogether.
Q 02What condition was Wilfred Owen in hospital for when he drafted 'Dulce et Decorum Est'?
Shell shock
Shell shock, then diagnosed as neurasthenia, came after a trench mortar blast left Owen unconscious for several days beside the remains of a fellow officer.
Q 03The poet of 'Dulce et Decorum Est' was killed in action exactly one week before which event?
The Armistice
The Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, and the telegram announcing Owen's death reached his family that same day as church bells rang to celebrate.
Q 04In the opening line of 'Dulce et Decorum Est', the bent-double soldiers are compared to what?
Old beggars under sacks
Old beggars under sacks is the poem's first image, and the next line has the same young soldiers knock-kneed and cursing through sludge.
Q 05In 'Dulce et Decorum Est', through what colour of light is the gassed soldier seen floundering?
Green
Green is used twice in two lines, and the speaker sees the scene only dimly, through misty panes.
Q 06What does the speaker of 'Dulce et Decorum Est' call the Latin motto quoted in the poem's last lines?
The old Lie
The old Lie is spelled with a capital L, and Owen breaks the Latin motto across the final two lines so the poem ends on a short, blunt half-line.
Q 07During the war that 'Dulce et Decorum Est' describes, British women handed men out of uniform which token of cowardice?
A white feather
A white feather was handed to men in civilian clothes by the Order of the White Feather, which an admiral founded in the first month of the war.
Q 08In 'Dulce et Decorum Est', what have many of the limping soldiers lost as they march asleep?
Their boots
Their boots are gone, yet the men limp on, and the poem calls them blood-shod: feet covered in blood where leather should be.
Q 09Which fellow war poet marked up Wilfred Owen's drafts of 'Dulce et Decorum Est' as his mentor?
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon left his handwriting on Owen's drafts. He later threatened to stab Owen in the leg rather than see him return to the trenches.
Q 10What does the Latin title 'Dulce et Decorum Est' mean, as the first half of a Roman line?
It is sweet and fitting
It is sweet and fitting is only half the thought: the line goes on to name the act being praised, which Owen holds back until the poem's final words.
Q 11In 'Dulce et Decorum Est', what does one stumbling soldier fail to put on in time?
His gas mask
His gas mask goes on too late. Owen calls the masks clumsy helmets, and early British gas helmets were hoods of chemically treated cloth worn over the whole head.
Q 12Which word ends two lines about the dying man in 'Dulce et Decorum Est', rhyming only with itself?
Drowning
Drowning closes both lines, and the repeat falls in a two-line stanza set apart from the rest, the shortest in the poem.
Q 13In 'Dulce et Decorum Est', where do the soldiers fling their gassed comrade before marching on?
Into a wagon
Into a wagon he goes, and the speaker asks the reader to pace behind it and watch the eyes writhing in the dying man's face.
Q 21The phrase 'coughing like hags' in 'Dulce et Decorum Est' is an example of which figure of speech?
Simile
Simile is a comparison made openly with 'like' or 'as', and Owen uses two in the poem's first two lines before any alarm is raised.
Q 22Which poet's patriotic 'The Soldier' is the classic contrast to Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est'?
Rupert Brooke
Rupert Brooke died in April 1915 of an infected mosquito bite, aboard a hospital ship off the Greek island of Skyros on his way to Gallipoli.
Q 23The closing words 'pro patria mori' in 'Dulce et Decorum Est' translate into English as what?
To die for one's country
Q 14The gassed soldier's hanging face in 'Dulce et Decorum Est' is likened to the face of what, sick of sin?
A devil
A devil sick of sin is the comparison, and it sits in the long final stanza, which runs to twelve lines as a single sentence.
Q 15In the closing lines of 'Dulce et Decorum Est', who is told the Latin motto with such high zest?
Children
Children are the audience Owen names, and he calls them ardent for some desperate glory.
Q 16Which former spa turned officers' war hospital is where Wilfred Owen drafted 'Dulce et Decorum Est'?
Craiglockhart
Craiglockhart took officers only, from 1916 to 1919, and Owen edited its patients' magazine during his stay.
Q 17In which Scottish city was Wilfred Owen a hospital patient when he drafted 'Dulce et Decorum Est'?
Edinburgh
Edinburgh also gave Owen a brief teaching job at Tynecastle High School, in a poor part of the city, while he was still a patient.
Q 18To which person did Wilfred Owen send 'Dulce et Decorum Est' in October 1917, calling it a gas poem?
His mother
His mother, Susan, received it with a note calling it a gas poem done the day before, and adding that it was not private but not final.
Q 19In the standard text of 'Dulce et Decorum Est', what are the 'Five-Nines' that drop behind the tired men?
German howitzer rounds
German howitzer rounds of 5.9-inch calibre got the nickname from British troops, who named them after the width of the gun barrel.
Q 20The two equal halves of 'Dulce et Decorum Est' echo, in broken form, which classic type of poem?
The sonnet
The sonnet has 14 lines, and the poem's 28 split into two parts of that length, the first told as it happens and the second looking back.
To die for one's country is praised in a Roman poem urging citizens to become warriors so fierce that enemies such as the Parthians would not dare resist.
Q 24Which Roman poet wrote the line that Wilfred Owen borrowed for the title of 'Dulce et Decorum Est'?
Horace
Horace was no model warrior himself: he recorded that he fled the Battle of Philippi without his shield.
Q 25Which metre does Wilfred Owen set up and then disrupt in 'Dulce et Decorum Est'?
Iambic pentameter
Iambic pentameter gives ten syllables a line, but Owen breaks it with heavy double stresses called spondees and cuts the final line to three Latin words.
Q 26Which gallantry medal did Wilfred Owen win for turning a captured machine gun on the enemy?
The Military Cross
The Military Cross was an award Owen had long wanted, to justify himself as a war poet, but it was not announced until months after his death.
Q 27Which composer wove nine Wilfred Owen war poems into the Latin Mass for the Dead in his War Requiem?
Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten wrote it for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, built after bombs destroyed the medieval one in the Second World War.
Q 28Which novelist's Regeneration Trilogy dramatises Wilfred Owen's hospital stay and his death?
Pat Barker
Pat Barker won the 1995 Booker Prize for the trilogy's final book, The Ghost Road.
Q 29Wilfred Owen is one of sixteen Great War poets named on a slate memorial in which church?
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey set the stone in Poets' Corner, and of the sixteen poets named it is Owen whose words were chosen for the inscription.
Q 30Where does the speaker of 'Dulce et Decorum Est' say the dying soldier still plunges at him?
In his dreams
In his dreams, all of them, the speaker stays helpless, and Owen's own doctor had urged him to turn his recurring nightmares into poetry as therapy.