High Flight

I love this poem. I always think of it before I fly somewhere and I am leaving tomorrow for British Columbia. So I thought I would share it with you. This poem was actually quoted by President Reagan on January 28, 1986 after the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

It was written by a man named John Gillespie Magee Jr. who was a American who joined the Canadian Air Force. He wrote this poem in an attempt to express the emotions he felt when flying. He died at the young age of 19 years old, while training in 1941.

As with many poems, we tend to interpret poems in a way that relates to us individually. I know it has encouraged me and I pray it touches you in some way as well.

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.