High Flight / John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

High Flight
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 OTU. 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.

Purportedly, the first person to read this poem later that day was fellow Pilot Officer Michael Le Bas (later Air Vice-Marshal M H Le Bas, Air Officer Commanding No. 1 Group RAF ), with whom Magee had trained, in the officers' mess.

Magee enclosed the poem on the back of a letter to his parents. His father, then curate 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, 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.

The poem
"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 even eagle flew — And, while with silent lifting mind I have trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, - Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Sources of inspiration for poem
The same words that conclude "High Flight" - "And touched the face of God" - also conclude a poem by Cuthbert Hicks published three years earlier in Icarus: An Anthology of the Poetry of Flight (Macmillan, London, 1938) compiled by R de la Bere and three flight cadets of the Royal Air Force College, Cranwell. In fact the last two lines in the Hicks poem are:
 * For I have danced the streets of heaven,
 * And touched the face of God.

This was in the poem "The Blind Man Flies". Of the many poets in this book, Hicks was one of only four that de la Bere was unable to trace and contact. The same book contains the poem "New World" by G. W. M. Dunn, which contains the phrase "on laughter-silvered wings." Dunn also wrote of "the lifting mind", another phrase that Magee uses in "High Flight." Dunn also refers to "the shouting of the air"; Magee has "chased the shouting wind". Finally, Magee's penultimate line, "The high untrespassed sanctity of space", closely resembles "Across the unpierced sanctity of space", which appears in the same volume in a poem by C. A. F. B. entitled "Dominion over Air", also previously published in the RAF College Journal.

These many coincidences of borrowed phrases from the same source book suggest that Magee was heavily influenced by it.

Modern use of the poem
"High Flight" has endured as a favourite poem among aviators and, more recently, astronauts.

Today it serves as the official poem of the Canadian Forces Air Command and Royal Air Force and it is required to be recited by memory by fourth class cadets (freshmen) at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) where it is also depicted in its Field House.

Portions of this poem appear on many headstones in Arlington National Cemetery.

The poem itself also appears as part of display panels at the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, the National Air Force Museum of Canada, Trenton, Ontario, and is the subject of a permanent display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio.

Gen. Robert Lee Scott, Jr. included it in his book God is My Co-Pilot.

Astronaut Michael Collins brought an index card with the poem typed on it on his Gemini 10 flight and included the complete poem in his autobiography Carrying The Fire.

Former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz quoted the first line of the poem in his book Failure Is Not An Option, at the end of Chapter 16, which deals with the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Ronald Reagan quoted from "High Flight" in his speech (written by Peggy Noonan) that followed the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. He quoted: ''..."slipped the surly bonds of Earth" to "touch the face of God." ''

By 1950 there was a primary school reader in Ontario, Canada called High Flight and which featured this poem. The poem had to be memorized by all students in Grade 8.

Musical adaptations
Songs and symphonic compositions have been based on Magee's text (including Bob Chilcott's 2008 setting, premiered on 1 May 2008 by the King's Singers ).

The poem was set to music and adapted by John Denver on his 1983 album It's About Time.

The poem was set to music (SATB choir and saxophone) by composer Christopher Marshall. The piece was commissioned and premiered by The Orlando Chorale (Orlando, Florida) in March 2009 under the direction of Gregory Ruffer with saxophonist George Weremchuk.

The first performance of a setting of words, known as "Even Such Is Time" from Fauré’s Requiem plus additional non-liturgical texts including “High Flight” was performed by the Nantwich Choral Society, conducted by John Naylor on Saturday 26 March 2011 in St Mary’s Church, Nantwich, Cheshire, UK. The music was written by Andrew Mildinhall, the former organist at the church, who accompanied the performance with the Northern Concordia Orchestra.

Other use in the media
Many U.S. television viewers were introduced to "High Flight" when some TV stations ended (and sometimes also began) their programming day with short films based on it. For example, the sign-off film occasionally used by KCRA-TV in Sacramento, California featured the spoken poem played to music and film of Air Force footage.

Its use in connection to spaceflight was satirised in an episode of The Simpsons episode "She of Little Faith", with Homer declaring "we are about to break the surly bonds of gravity and punch the face of God".

In an episode of The West Wing ("The Crackpots and These Women," Season One Episode 5), President Josiah Bartlet references the last line ("touched the face of God") while discussing America's ventures into outer space and pondering what the country's next great achievement might be.

The poem is paraphrased in the penultimate episode "Daybreak" of Battlestar Galactica.

In an episode of AMC's Mad Men ("Maidenform", Season Two Episode 6), showing the signoff footage of a television station, used in a scene to establish the late night hour of a tryst.

The poem also features in the 1993 Russell Crowe movie For the Moment, in which it is recited by Crowe's character, Lachlan Curry, while wooing the character Lil.

Slipstream, a 1989 post-apocalyptic science fiction adventure film, makes frequent use of the poem, most notably by Mark Hamill and Bob Peck, and in line with the film's predominant theme of aviation.

Actor James Cromwell recites this poem in its entirety in the film The Snow Walker.

Novelist Arthur Hailey quoted its first two lines as an epigraph for his bestselling novel Airport.

A full transcript of the poem can be found in the preceding page of chapter one of Scott O'Grady's book Return With Honor.