High Flight

“Sonnet to Rupert Brooke” by John Gillespie Magee Jr. (1938)

This is a sonnet Magee wrote to honor the poet Rupert Brooke, who attended the Rugby School in the early 1900s. Brooke, a World War I poet and soldier, died at 27 of septicemia. His poetry inspired Magee’s own interest in the sonnet form. In this poem, written when Magee was 16, he imagines Brooke’s burial, remarking on the “sublime” (Line 4) nature of its site in Greece “where the leaves were green” (Line 2). As in “High Flight,” Magee’s speaker assesses the quality of sunlight and its “fading deeps” (Line 5) and how “daylight, as a dust, slips through the trees / And drifting, gilds the fern around [Brooke’s] grave” (Lines 9-10). Magee also employs elements of praise here as he suggests Brooke urged “new sight to blinded eyes” (Line 13) regarding the difficulties of war.

“Prospect” by John Gillespie Magee Jr. (1941)

In Chapter 7 of Roger Cole’s High Flight: The Life and Poetry of Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee (2013), he reprints Magee’s early poem “Prospect.” This is a love poem written in 1941 for Elinor Lyon, the headmaster of Rugby School’s daughter. His earnest teenage longing is expressed in the lines “Is it all in vain / To breathe out sonnets to the midnight air / To long to touch your hands, your lips again?” (Lines 10-12). This poem provides insight into what Magee might have been feeling as a 19-year-old civilian and alludes to his writing of sonnets—the form in which “High Flight” is also written.

“Per Ardua” by John Gillespie Magee Jr. (1941)

The text of “Per Ardua” is embedded in this entry about Magee for This Day in Aviation. Its title comes from the Latin motto of the RCAF, Per Ardua Ad Astra, which translates to “through adversity to the stars.” The poem is a tribute to fallen men in The Battle of Britain, and was written in November of 1941, right after Magee’s “first combat mission” (Swopes, Bryan. “11 December 1941.” This Day in Aviation, 2022). Like “High Flight” it includes images of pilots, who “climbed the white mists of the morning” (Line 1). However, the certainty of the speaker of “High Flight” is missing here. The sacredness is replaced with doubt as the speaker wonders, “Do these [men] know only / Night’s darkness, and Valhalla’s silence now?” (Lines 13-16). While praising the men, the speaker leaves open a consideration regarding the cost of war. This is believed to be the last poem Magee wrote before his death.