*High flight

Today I was browsing through one of my old diaries (from 2006) where I had written down a poem by the Anglo-American pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr. who fought in WW2. He died when he was 19 years old.

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 nor 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.

☙