Poem "High Flight"

Very good programme,I read the poem at my father’s funeral . It must be pinned on hundreds of aviation noticeboards around the world. Alternative aviation versions are available at http://www.skygod.com

The poem was included on the back of a letter to his parents.

Btw i took a picture of every service headstone on that perticular day, and i will be putting them on my Flickr account as the winter progresses, and each in their turn will get a place in the Hallowed Ground Project http://hallowedgroundproject.org/

Very nice photograph. Never apologise for Remembering one of the fallen.

It’s interesting to note that he died on the day Germany declared war on America. It looks like he had a very interesting background. Born in China, American Father, British Mother, educated in England then the USA.

What I found more interesting personally is how much he had been influenced by other poets, to the extent that phraseology he used in High Flight was to be found in the works of those he admired, sometimes with very little alteration.

I also very much like this, believed to be his last (and lifted shamelessly from Wikipedia.)

Per Ardua

(To those who gave their lives to England during the Battle of
Britain and left such a shining example to us who follow, these
lines are dedicated.)

“They that have climbed the white mists of the morning;
They that have soared, before the world’s awake,
To herald up their foeman to them, scorning
The thin dawn’s rest their weary folk might take;

Some that have left other mouths to tell the story
Of high, blue battle, quite young limbs that bled,
How they had thundered up the clouds to glory,
Or fallen to an English field stained red.

Because my faltering feet would fail I find them
Laughing beside me, steadying the hand
That seeks their deadly courage –
Yet behind them
The cold light dies in that once brilliant Land ….

Do these, who help the quickened pulse run slowly,
Whose stern, remembered image cools the brow,
Till the far dawn of Victory, know only
Night’s darkness, and Valhalla’s silence now?”

Regards,

kev35

Taken in August right before a very heavy rain storm…..

If its thought to be bad taste i will remove it….

Far from it!

This is what remembrance is all about!

This young American wrote the most famous aeronautical poem ever, a short while later he was killed flying Spitfires, before his country officially came into the war.

Would be nice if some of us Brits couldn’t club together, clean it up and lay some flowers for the 11th November.

can we do it?

Taken in August right before a very heavy rain storm…..

If its thought to be bad taste i will remove it….

In need of a jetwasher and a bunch of flowers.

Is this a recent photo?:(