Up, up the long delirious, burning blue

Skies like these always remind me of my Dad and his fascination with flight. He and my Mum met at a gliding school and Dad had his 'silver seas' glider pilots licence, he was also an aeronautical engineer.

We had the poem High Flight read at his funeral as he was a religious man and also because of his connections with flight. He actually requested it himself. I'm not particularly religious but do love the poem and always think Dad's up there somewhere still chasing those thermals.

'High Flight' is by John Gillespie Magee who was killed at the tender age of 19, while flying a Spitfire just a few months after penning this poem.

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.