Remembrance Sunday.
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 blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark nor 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 in September 1941
by John Gillespie Magee Jr
Royal Canadian Air Force
died 11 December 1941.
Aged 19.
5 comments:
Hari OM
Perfectly poignant... YAM xx
What can one say in response to such a poem? Exhilaration? Eagerness? A sense of fragility? A vibrant young life--lost.
Thank you ladies.
I felt there is a youthful exuberance that speaks wonderfully through this poem, balanced with a sadness of the reality behind the situation that has allowed such experience to someone so young in the first place. There is a painful poignancy that matches that exuberance in the short space for life between writing it and his death. That pain makes it more precious somehow.
Cheers.
Precious indeed.
Cheers dbs.
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