High Flight

First poem and it's one of my favourite. I discovered it when I wanted to become a fighter pilot (thanks to a comic book series called The Adventures of Buck Danny). It's the most famous poem among the pilot community, so I wanted to share.

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 windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

No 412 squadron, RCAF

Killed 11 December 1941