High Flight

High Flight is arguably the most famous aviation poem ever written and has inspired pilots the world over. Its author, RCAF Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr., was killed in a mid-air collision over England in 1941. His legacy will be enduring as long as men and women take to the skies in pursuit of the age old dreams of Icarus and Daedalus.

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 windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.