HIGH FLIGHT
(Or an act of passing through the air by the use of wings at a conspicuous distance above the ground)
Translated from the John Gillespie Magee Jr original by David L Morris.
Oh, I have freed myself from the menacing bonds of the third planet from the luminous celestial body around which the earth and the other planets revolve,
And performed a rhythmic and patterned succession of movements on the skies on aerofoils covered with a mirthful, white, sonorous, ductile metallic element;
Toward the luminous celestial body around which the earth and the other planets revolve I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-bifurcated visible masses of water or ice supended at a considerable height in the air... and done a hundred things
You've not had thoughts, images or emotions of during sleep... wheeled and sailed or hovered in the air without engine power or loss of altitude
High in the absence of sound or noise lit by the luminous celestial body around which the earth and other planets revolve. Remaining suspended over a place or object,
I've chased the wind uttering a sudden loud cry and flung
My enthusiastic aircraft through corridors or passages of a mixture of invisible, odorless and tasteless gasses that surround the earth, marked by an absence of feet.
Up, up the long, mentally-disturbed portion of the colour spectrum lying between green and violet that is undergoing combustion
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never singing bird of family Auludidae or even large diurnal bird of prey of the Accipter family flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out the terminal part of my vertebrate forelimb used as a grasping organ, and brought it bodily in contact with, especially so as to perceive through the tactile sense, the front part of the head including the chin, mouth, nose, cheeks, eyes and forehead of the Supreme or Ultimate reality whom men worship as creator and ruler of the universe.