Winds of Change.NET: STS-107

February 1, 2003

STS-107

by Armed Liberal at February 1, 2003 6:07 PM

HIGH FLIGHT by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bounds 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 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 windswept 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.

Trite, but today of all days, true.

Printer-friendly Version

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.windsofchange.net/windsopcentre-cms/trackback.cgi/755

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference
"STS-107"

Comments

#1 from Robin Roberts at 6:53 pm on Feb 01, 2003

Not trite, but perfectly chosen

#2 from Eric at 10:42 pm on Feb 01, 2003

THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH

Let the sweet fresh breezes heal me
As they rove around the girth
Of our lovely mother planet
Of the cool, green hills of Earth.

We rot in the moulds of Venus,
We retch at her tainted breath.
Foul are her flooded jungles,
Crawling with unclean death.

[ --- the harsh bright soil of Luna ---
--- Saturn's rainbow rings ---
--- the frozen night of Titan --- ]

We've tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.

The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
ALL HANDS! STAND BY! FREE FALLING!
And the lights below us fade.

Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps a race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet ---

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the friendly skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.

- Robert A. Heinlein, 1951

#3 from Joe Katzman at 11:40 pm on Feb 01, 2003

FYI, "High Flight" is World War II-era poem written by Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr., an American citizen. He gave his life flying with my country's Royal Canadian Air Force, which accepted his service and sacrifice before America had entered the war.

There are many kinds of pioneers. Pilot Officer Magee was one, too.

Post a comment

Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:

*This* puts text in bold.

_This_ puts text in italics.

bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.

To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.

Finally, note that a constant onslaught of Trackback spams from auto-generated blogspot blogs has forced Winds to ban the blogspot.com domain from use in comments or trackbacks. If you host on blogspot, consider moving; otherwise, the complaints need to be directed at Google not us.