About John Gillespie Magee, Jr. (1922 – 1941)

John Gillespie Magee, Jr. was born in Shanghai, China, to American missionary parents—an Episcopal priest and a British teacher. He was educated in England at Rugby School, where he began writing poetry inspired by the English Romantics.

When World War II broke out, Magee returned to North America, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940, and trained as a fighter pilot. By 1941, he was flying Spitfires with No. 412 Squadron in Lincolnshire, England.

During a high-altitude flight to 33,000 feet, Magee experienced the transcendent beauty of flight that inspired his immortal poem, “High Flight.” He mailed the poem to his parents on September 3, 1941, noting that he had written it “after a flight among the clouds.”

Just three months later, on December 11, 1941, Magee was killed in a midair collision during a training mission. He was only nineteen.

Buried at Scopwick Cemetery in Lincolnshire, his headstone bears the motto of the Royal Air Force:

Per ardua ad astra — “Through adversity to the stars.”

Magee’s High Flight has become the defining aviator’s prayer, quoted by presidents, astronauts, and pilots around the world.

High Flight

by Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr., RCAF (1941)

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.