"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 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.


Written in September 1941, just a few months before his death,  by Royal Canadian Air Force pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr. (1922 - 1941)



This is a stained-glass window decoration which I bought in the little harbour town of Rockport, Massachusetts during a trip to the US in 1996 for a wedding.

The poem "High Flight" is one of my all-time favourites.