High Flight
Browncoat Blog copy:
There was a time here in the US when your local broadcaster would stop broadcasting. Every single night! No infomercials, no all-night news, just a test pattern. The one with the indian chief in the middle or the one with the bands of color that you still see on PBS and CBC or the bull's-eye one or... um, you get the picture.
Back then, the stations would signal the end of their broadcasting day patriotically. Mostly "America the Beautiful" and pictures of purple mountains and amber waves. Sometimes the national anthem with the flag waving in the breeze.
Our favorite was always the "High Flight" reading. "High Flight" is a poem written by a young American pilot in the RCAF at the beginning of WWII. This is the only poem I've ever been able to retain in my leaky memory. It was read with the video of an Air Force fighter soaring and tumbling in the clouds high over the earth:
"High Flight"
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the sky 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 wind-swept 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.
It reminds me of running through fields as a kid, the grasshoppers scattering in my wake, the sun burning down, the sky arching overhead all blue and hot and far away, spinning round and round and falling to the ground laughing.
There was a time here in the US when your local broadcaster would stop broadcasting. Every single night! No infomercials, no all-night news, just a test pattern. The one with the indian chief in the middle or the one with the bands of color that you still see on PBS and CBC or the bull's-eye one or... um, you get the picture.
Back then, the stations would signal the end of their broadcasting day patriotically. Mostly "America the Beautiful" and pictures of purple mountains and amber waves. Sometimes the national anthem with the flag waving in the breeze.
Our favorite was always the "High Flight" reading. "High Flight" is a poem written by a young American pilot in the RCAF at the beginning of WWII. This is the only poem I've ever been able to retain in my leaky memory. It was read with the video of an Air Force fighter soaring and tumbling in the clouds high over the earth:
"High Flight"
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the sky 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 wind-swept 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.
It reminds me of running through fields as a kid, the grasshoppers scattering in my wake, the sun burning down, the sky arching overhead all blue and hot and far away, spinning round and round and falling to the ground laughing.