To Slip the Surly Bonds of Earth

A poem in Remembrance of Elder S. Khomer Beaty, Sr.
A veteran helicopter pilot in Vietnam (three tours), and
A Soldier of the Cross, A Follower of the Lamb.

These often quoted words are from a wartime sonnet by John Gillespie Magee.

Magee was a young American who, like many others, volunteered to join the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940. The RCAF had a special program to enlist Americans in their war effort before the US entered the conflict at the end of 1941. He joined a squadron in England, where he was killed a year and half later at the ripe old age of 19. Legend has it that he composed this sonnet on the back of a letter addressed to his mother.

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've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Home