Comments by "Colonel K" (@Paladin1873) on "Highest Altitude Balloon Record" video.
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"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.
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 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."
This sonnet is the official poem of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Air Force. It was written by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., an American volunteer pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War, who served in a Spitfire squadron until he was killed on 11 December 1941 after he bailed out too low following a collision with another aircraft near Ruskington, Lincolnshire county, England. He was 19 years old. What a loss to the literary world.
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