High Flight
The author of this sonnet—most known to television audiences of a certain age as part of the air sign-off—was John Gillespie Magee Jr (1922-1941), an Anglo-American aviator and son of missionaries, was killed in flight while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force, which he joined before the United States officially entered the war. “High Flight” was sent to on the back of a letter to his father, then a church rector in Washington DC, and became popularized through the efforts of poet Archibald MacLeish. It now serves as the RCAF and the Royal Air Force's official poem; it also is required to be recited by memory by first year cadets at the United States Air Force Academy.
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, 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.
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