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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Today's Birthday: John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
2008-06-09
Magee's posthumous fame rests mainly on his sonnet High Flight, started on 18 August 1941, just a few months before his death, while he was based at No. 53 Operational Training Unit (OTU) in Llandow, Wales. He had flown up to 33,000 feet in a Spitfire Mk I, his seventh flight in a Spitfire. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck with the inspiration of a poem -- "To touch the face of God." He completed the poem later that day after landing. The first person to read this poem later that day was almost certainly Air Vice-Marshall M.H. Le Bas, with whom Magee had trained, in the officers` mess.

Magee enclosed the poem on the back of a letter to his parents and his father, then rector of Saint John's Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, reprinted it in church publications. The poem became more widely known through the efforts of Archibald McLeish, the then Librarian of Congress, who included it in an exhibition of poems called 'Faith and Freedom' at the Library of Congress in February 1942. The manuscript copy of the poem remains at the Library of Congress.

High Flight has endured as a favorite poem among aviators and, more recently, astronauts. Portions of this poem appear on many headstones in Arlington National Cemetery. Today it serves as the official poem of the RCAF and RAF and it is required to be recited by memory by first year cadets at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). . . .
Here is the poem ...

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward IÂ’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. HovÂ’ring there,
IÂ’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
IÂ’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind IÂ’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
Posted by:Mike

#4  Sigh... this poem was all over the Air Force when I was there. (1977-1997 for anyone keeping track of this kind of minutia)

It was on Garrison Kieller's daily poetry/public radio thingy today, so I guess that it hasn't entirely gone down the civilian memory hole.

Speaking about Texas Public Radio - they let all the regular part-time announcers go this week. Every one of us, some of whom have been working there for fifteen years or so.

Apparently, they want to put the money saved into the news department - and to automate most of the weekend and evening shifts that we worked. This means that now I really have to make a lot of money from my books! (The Adelsverein Trilogy is coming out in December - this is the series about the Texas Hill Country Germans. Insert shameless mercantile plea here - please buy my book!)
Posted by: Sgt. Mom   2008-06-09 19:04  

#3  yup...read it to the nation when the Challenger blew up...
Posted by: Warthog   2008-06-09 16:17  

#2  One of Reagan's fave poems.
Posted by: Grins Dingle9430   2008-06-09 16:16  

#1  And fade to test pattern.

Is this ever broadcast anymore? What are we teaching our children?
Posted by: Shomosh Tojo7120   2008-06-09 09:23  

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