“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 may well recognise the poem as High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr, and if you do you’ll probably be wondering why it’s appearing in a blog about life working on a farm, seeing as I definitely didn’t fly to work this morning.
Well, to be honest, I arrived, I looked up at sky and mentally quoted the peom to myself. I could have muttered “I remember Adlestrop“, despite it being a bit early in the year, and the lack of trains.
I find it a similar sort of poem – uplifting and somehow reminding me of bright skies. There are probably more appropriate poems to quote – but I just don’t know that many poems. I’ve always meant to learn The Windhover, particularly as we have kestrels out on the field, but I can’t get my head round the words: there are too many of them and words like “dauphin” and “chevalier” haven’t lasted well over the years.
Have you got any favourite poems for day to day use? Or any that you can’t get on with?