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

Od 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 hills of air.

Up, the long delirious burning blue

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew--

And, while the silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespasses sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God

Composed by John Gillespie Magee, Jr
at 30,000 feet over England in 1941,
while serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force