High Flight

To Slip the surly bonds of Earth...
The following poem is called High Flight
by Jon Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Pilot Officer, RCAF ---- 1941

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence; hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, Up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
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In December 1941, Pilot Officer John G. Magee, a nineteen year old American
serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England, was killed when his Spitfire
collided with another airplane inside a cloud. Several months before his death, he
composed his immortal sonnet "High Flight," a copy of which he mailed to
his mother in the United States.