Intoxicating Words

I'm doing research this morning for our Veterans Day celebrations next week, and I came across this poem again. It's most familiar for the excerpts used by President Reagan in his speech after the Challenger explosion in 1986. In its entirety, the poem is overwhelmingly descriptive. I needed to see some of the sky this morning.


High Flight

By John Gillespie Magee, Jr

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.


Special Note for High Flight:During the Battle of Britain, many Americans crossed the border into Canada to enlist with the Royal Canadian Air Force ... they knowingly broke the law in order to fight Hitler's Germany. John Gillespie Magee, Jr., born in Shanghai, China, in 1922. When Magee was just 18 years old, he entered flight training and was sent to England, on 30 June 1941. He flew the Spitfire being promoted to the rank of Pilot Officer. German bombers were crossing the English Channel regularly to attack Britain's cities and factories. On September 3, 1941, Magee flew a Spitfire V test flight which inspired him to write his poem. That same day he wrote a letter to his parents which included this now famous poem. Three months later, on December 11, 1941 (three days after the US entered the war and four days after Pearl Harbor), John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was killed. He was just 19 years old. John Gillespie Magee, Jr. is at Scopwick, Lincolnshire, in a churchyard cemetery.