At the age of nineteen, Jon Gillespie Magee, Jr. was killed in a training accident over Roxholme, England. He had joined the Canadian air force at eighteen years of age and had attained the rank of Pilot Officer. His sonnet “High Flight” was written only months before his death. The ability of this young man to have captured the essence of flight and then to have transposed it to the written word; all while training for war and going from “rookie” to fighter pilot in a year, is what makes this one of the most awe inspiring works I have ever read.

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 wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever 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.