Today’s poem – a famous sonnet from World War 2 – is chosen and introduced by Ms. Price.
I used to be a poetry fiend when (studying mainly maths!) at school/university – I learnt many off by heart and had a book where I would write ones in that particularly struck my mood/feeling at that time. I lost track of that once I started working, and instead – when I was first diagnosed with cancer in 2018 – started keeping a book of books that Ive read!
High Flight – John Gillespie Magee
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward Ive 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; hovring there,
Ive chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
Ive 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.”
Written when he was 19, shortly before he was killed in 1941, this poem is inscribed in full on the space shuttle challenger memorial at Arlington Ceremony in the USA, and was also taken into space on an index card by Michael Collins (who famously did not walk on the moon but instead controlled the Apollo 11 whilst his colleagues Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong took that giant leap). It is also the official poem of both the RAF and the RCAF (Canadian airforce).
