HIGH FLIGHT by JOHN GILLESPIE MAGEE Jr.

This poem was written by an American fighter pilot with the Canadian N° 412 RCAF Spitfire squadron. Born in Shanghai, China in 1922, he was the son of missionary parents, Rev. and Mrs. John Gillespie Magee; his father an American citizen, and his mother, British. 

Arriving in the US in 1939, he gained a scholarship to Yale, but decided to fly, and arrived with the RCAF in England in July 1941. In August or September 1941 he wrote the poem, and sent it, written on an envelope, to his parents. On December 11th 1941, at age 19, he died in a collision over English soil. His remains lie buried in the churchyard cemetery at Scopwick, Lincolnshire. 

This corrected version is close to the original. (Note that the correct spelling of the name is Magee, and not, as is sometimes thought, McGee.)

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

Off 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 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