The "surly bonds of earth" quote is from a poem (well known to all pilots) by a Canadian WWII airman named John Gillespie Magee. Three months after writing the poem (and mailing it home to his parents) he was killed in an accident in his Spitfire. He was 19. Not that is was not appropriate for Reagan to use these words, oh no, but they were not his words.
Quote:
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. Hov'ring 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 windswept 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.
"High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. 1941
|