Guest Comments by Lynley Capon

Editor's Note: Originally from New Zealand, Capon is a teacher and writer now living in Thailand. She's also a regular and highly regarded contributor to this magazine.
 
THAILAND -- I was interested in the Feature Story headlined Remember the Fallen, Despise the Wars about the recent Remembrance Day services in Canada. The story and accompanying photos came from your Canadian contributor K.C. Foore.

Among my favorite poems of all time is one I learned in high school years ago and still remember by heart. It is High Flight, written by a Royal Canadian Air Force fighter-pilot in the Second World War. I understand it is quoted in a Canadian war-memorial museum somewhere.

High Flight

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 thro' footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor 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.

Poem by John Gillespie Magee Jr (1922-1941), a poet-aviator killed in a mid-air collision over Britain during the Second World War.

What a wonderful tribute Gillespie left, but what a waste of such a young man's life. There is no doubt that war is hell.

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