“Poetry is in danger of dying out. More than eight in ten Britons cannot recite a verse by heart, a study shows.”

In comparison with older generations the article states that:

In fact, it is only the over-60s who can remember verses – with 72 per cent able to deliver lines they learned as children. Two-thirds know entire poems – with Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est (It Is Sweet And Right) most popular.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST (It is sweet and proper)

by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest 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
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes 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, 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
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(1917, 1920)

O Captain! My Captain!

by Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; 
   But O heart! heart! heart! 
      O the bleeding drops of red, 
         Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
            Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 
Rise up–for you the flag is flung–for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths–for you the shores 
     a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; 
   Here Captain! dear father! 
      This arm beneath your head! 
         It is some dream that on the deck 
            You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 
   Exult, O shores, and ring O bells!
      But I, with mournful tread, 
         Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
            Fallen cold and dead.