On Fri, 19 May 2006 22:14:34 -0000, Jim Logajan
wrote:

"gatt" wrote:
There it is. No finer point has been put to it.

"Tony" wrote in message
oups.com...
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee has given my reasons to fly better than
I can. I'll copy HIgh Flight for you. Anthony W: North Carolina (PP
SEL INST, with a couple of thousand hours wrapped inside a M20J).

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth


It's a great emotionally stirring poem, no doubt. Which makes it remarkable
that some arguably great parodies of it appear to have been written:

http://www.skygod.com/quotes/flyingjokes.html#high

It's a tough call, but I find the one titled "High Flight, with FAA
Supplement" the most amusing.

One's mileage may vary wrt "High Flight," R. Bach and St-Ex. Gann's
pretty good. Hopkins' "Windhover" may appeal to the metaphysically
inclined:

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Don