In memorium- salute a fellow poet - Viv Wigley's Blog

Hi, folks,

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the poem 'High flight', by John Gillespie Magee junior.

Son of an American missionary Father from Pittsburgh and an English missionary Mother, born in Shanghai in 1922. After training with the Royal Canadian Air Force, he gained his pilot's wings and transferred to England in 1941. An accomplished scholar, well versed in Latin and Greek, he was also a poet, and had written a volume of work before his sixteenth birthday. He is most well known, however, for his poem 'High flight', that came to him during a high altitude patrol. Tragically, he died a few weeks after writing it, in a mid-air collision, but his work lives on in the Library of Congress in Washington.

At some point this month, if you would, kindly read the following and raise a glass to one of the finest poems of the last century.

I already have.

Regards, Viv.

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.