High Flight

This seemed appropriate on a weekend when Neil Armstrong died.  The poem was written by 19 year old John Gillespie Magee, Jr. an American serving as a pilot with the RCAF in World War II in England, prior to the entry of America into the War.  A few months after he wrote the poem  he was killed in a mid-air collision.

High Flight    

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.