"High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr is required to be recited from memory by every United States Air Force Academy Cadet before Graduation. The sonnet was written about 2 months before he died in a midair plane crash during WWII. His father, John Gillespie Magee, was crate at Church of the Presidents, St. John's Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square Washington, D.C. John Gillespie Magee received the sonnet in a letter from his son 2 months before his death. The poem was recieted throughout WWII to raise money for war bonds. The original hand-written text of this sonnet is in the Library of Congress.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunwards I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a thousand things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering 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.