Every once in a long while, someone pens a poem that captures the hearts of a generation and then lives forever. John Gillespie Magee Jr. was one such uncommon poet. Early in World War II, 18-year-old John Magee enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He progressed quickly and soon became a pilot officer. One day, while testing a new high-altitude plane at 30,000 feet, Officer Magee was awestruck by what he saw and felt. Upon landing, he put his experience to words in the immortal poem “High Flight,” which he wrote on the back of a letter to his parents.
A few months later, in December of 1941, Magee was killed during a routine training flight over England’s countryside. His sonnet became the official poem of the British and Canadian Air Force and a favorite of the U.S. Air Force. In 1986 President Ronald Reagan quoted from it when he spoke to the nation after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. The stirring words, written by a young pilot during the dark days of World War II, lift us to new heights and open to our view a glorious, exhilarating scene:
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 ever 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.
Program #4016