John Gillespie Magee Jr. - Roland Cemetery, Roland, OK, USA
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The Snowdog
N 35° 25.111 W 094° 31.662
15S E 361302 N 3920528
The poem "High Flight," by John Gillespie Magee Jr, is engraved on this monument in Roland Cemetery, in southeast Roland, Oklahoma.
Waymark Code: WM16EA7
Location: Oklahoma, United States
Date Posted: 07/12/2022
Views: 1
John Gillespie Magee Jr, a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, wrote "High Flight" in August 1941 while stationed outside London and mailed the poem to his family just months before his death. The poem gained immediate popularity and was exhibited at the Library of Congress in 1942. Since then it has been featured prominently in aviation memorials across the world, including that of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Back in the days of broadcast television this waymarker heard it on many an evening as stations went off the air for the night. The version inscribed here does not follow the usual capitalization or line breaks of the published poem; it is represented below how it appears on the marker.
HIGH FLIGHT
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
and danced the skies on laughter-silvered
wing;
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.
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