In December 1941, Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., a nineteen-year-old American serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England, was killed when his Spitfire collided with another airplane inside a cloud. Discovered among his personal effects was this sonnet, written on the back of a letter at the time he was in flying school at Farnborough, England.

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 sunsplit 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 winds 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.