High Flight

by Flying Officer John Gillespie Magee

Oh I have slipped the surely 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.

Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind aloft
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 neither lark nor eagle flew.

And there with silent lifting mind
I've trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Written by Flying Officer John Gillespie Magee when he was a 19-year-old British fighter pilot during WWII - as he soared into the atmosphere during a high altitude test flight of a Spitfire V. Magee died three month later in a mid-air collision.