High Flight

(Click on image for artist's page.)

       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 windswept 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.

High Flight, a poem by John Gillespie McGee, Jr. (1922 - 1941). An American/British fighter pilot, he flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II. He came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at age 19 on December 11, 1941, during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick, Lincolnshire. The poem was written on the back of a letter to his parents which stated, "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed."

• Annotated High Flight 1. Flight crews must insure that all surly bonds have been slipped entirely before aircraft taxi or flight is attempted.
• Flight by Committee is my less poetic tribute to the Warriors of the Air