Per Ardua Ad Astra

“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.”—John Gillespie Magee, Jr. 

Fairly Unbalanced

By Michael Tallon

ANTIGUA Guatemala—(Hubris)—June 2026—Over eight bloody and awful years of Ronald Reagan, the only time I had an ounce of respect for the man was in the terrible aftermath of the Challenger explosion when he quoted John Gillespie Magee, Jr., a poet and aviator from the middle of the 20th Century. 

Magee was born in China to missionary parents in 1922. His father was from the States, and his mother was British. Through his mother’s lineage, he was able to join the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1939, with the intention to fight with the Allies in World War Two, and was sent to England for pilot training. 

Tragically, at 19, he was killed on a practice run before seeing action. Thankfully, for the world of letters, shortly before he died, he sent a copy of this poem to his mother, and she saw that it was published posthumously. 

Now it lives, tenderly, in the back of a million minds to be recalled when some few of us strive upward into the light as did the crew of Artemis II, and I’m happy to share it again, now that they have returned safely to our beautiful, maddening, blue-marble home after traveling farther from our planetary cradle than any other living creature in the 3.7 billion years of our global history—and that’s pretty damn cool. 

Love, light, and hope to you all. 

High Flight
By John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

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.

Copyright Credit: Magee, John Gillespie. “Letter to Parents,” September 3, 1941. John Magee Papers, Library of Congress, Washington DC. 

Editor’s Note: In researching archival photographs to illustrate Tallon’s short essay above, I discovered that Magee and I had something in common: a passion for the writing of Rupert Brooke (first introduced to me by James Dickey in 1974, when I was studying towards my MA at the University of South Carolina). A bi-national Greek/American, I made a pilgrimage to Brooke’s grave, on the island of Skyros, in the mid-1980s. I share with you here Magee’s homage to Brooke, which won him the poetry prize at Rugby School . . . a prize Brooke had won, himself, 34 years before.

A Sonnet to Rupert Brooke
By John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

We laid him in a cool and shadowed grove
One evening in the dreamy scent of thyme
Where leaves were green, and whispered high above—
A grave as humble as it was sublime;
There, dreaming in the fading deeps of light—
The hands that thrilled to touch a woman’s hair;
Brown eyes, that loved the Day, and looked on Night,
A soul that found at last its answered Prayer . . .
There daylight, as a dust, slips through the trees.
And drifting, gilds the fern around his grave—
Where even now, perhaps, the evening breeze
Steals shyly past the tomb of him who gave
New sight to blinded eyes; who sometimes wept—
A short time dearly loved; and after,—slept.”

Dame Vera Lynn reads John Gillespie Magee, Jr.’s “High Flight.”

Please do follow Michael Tallon on Substack (Michael Tallon Writes) and via his website.