Burning Blue

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• 19 year old Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee is killed while engaged in a training mission with three other Spitfires when he abruptly emerges from clouds and collides with an Airspeed Oxford over Lincolnshire. Magee had written the peom “High Flight” in August of 1941:

 

“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've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”