HIGH FLIGHT

In December 1941, Pilot Officer John G. Magee, a 19-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 fortunately mailed to his parents in the U.S.A.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

A nd danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

O f sun-split clouds and done a hundred things

You have not dreams of wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence, hovering 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 windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew,

A nd, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

-John Gillespie Magee Jr.