Library Reference Number: 089
"High Flight" - Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, RCAF
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.
- - Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee
No. 412 Squadron, R. C. A. F.
Killed 11th December 1941
The poem High Flight was written by a young fighter pilot during World War II. Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee. He was an American citizen who was born of missionary parents in Shanghai and educated in Britain's famed Rugby School. He went to the United Stated in 1939, and at the age of 18, won a scholarship to Yale. Like other Americans of the time who wished to fly in the cause of freedom, he decided to enlist in the services of a nation actively engaged in war. Magee enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in September 1940. He then served overseas with an RCAF Spitfire Squadron until his death on active service in December, 1941.
On September 3, 1941, Magee flew a high altitude (30,000 feet) test flight in a newer model of the Spitfire V. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck with the inspiration of a poem - "To touch the face of God." Once back on the ground, he wrote a letter to his parents. In it he commented, "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed." On the back of the letter, he jotted down his poem, "High Flight."
Just three months later, on December 11, 1941 (and only three days after the US entered the war), Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was killed. The Spitfire V he was flying, VZ-H, collided with an Oxford Trainer from Cranwell Airfield while over Tangmere, England. The two planes were flying in the clouds and neither saw the other. He was just 19 years old.
Parents of the author of the above poem were living in Washington D.C. at the time of his untimely death. On receiving the poem, it was seen by Archibald MacLeish, who was Librarian of U.S.Congress. He decided to enter it into an exhibition of poems named "Faith and Freedom" in February 1942. This resulted in the poem being widely copied and distributed world-wide. Inevitably, with being copied to such a large extent, text varied in terms of form, punctuation and lay-out.
Ronald Reagan, addressing NASA employees following the tragic loss of the Challenger 7 crew on STS-51L, used the poem in a well-remembered line: "We shall never forget them nor the last time we saw them, as they prepared for their mission and waved good-bye and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God."
The original is in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, and we believe the above to be an accurate version of the poem John Gillespie Magee sent to his parents shortly before he was killed. In addition to being widely accepted as a mantra to pilots, it has a direct bearing on aircrew experience No.90 in this Saltire Branch Library, the title being "Premonition?" contributed by Branch member Ron Holton. To gain further details of the other pilot involved in Magee's tragic flying accident, you are strongly advised to read Ron Holton's account.
* see No.90 in Web Library, Ron Holton's story "Premonition"