[Magdalen] John Magee was Prayers ANSWERED: missing, beloved dog is found!

[Marion Thompson]

I love also Rupert Brooke's earlier poem 'The Voice'.

Marion, a pilgrim

On 2/20/2016 1:16 AM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford wrote:
> There's a small plot in the corner of a field in a cemetery where 23
> British air cadets are buried, and on a marker is the poem "the Soldier".
>
>        If I should die, think only this of me,
>        That there's some corner of some foreign field
>        that is forever England...
>
> Those who wish to read some collected stories about the training of these
> boys can read the following:
>
> http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=press_ebooks
>
>
>
> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
>
> On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 10:43 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I can never see this poem without thinking of my favorite home health
>> patient, who had been in the Army Air Corps in WWII and had "flown the
>> Hump" over the Himalayas. He told me some interesting tales about those
>> days. When he died his family asked me to be part of the funeral service.
>> At the burial, his grandson, a naval aviator, read this poem. As he
>> finished, I happened to look up, and far above us, I saw a jet going across
>> the sky, leaving its trail behind it. I thought the old pilot would have
>> liked that.
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 6:34 PM, shutchinsonca <shutchinsonca at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry Sibyl -- doing email from my new phone!! I hope this goes to you
>> and
>>> the list.
>>> blessings Susan
>>>
>>>
>>> Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.-------- Original message
>>> --------From: Sibyl Smirl <polycarpa3 at ckt.net> Date: 2016-02-19  2:39 PM
>>> (GMT-08:00) To: magdalen at herberthouse.org Subject: Re: [Magdalen] John
>>> Magee was Prayers ANSWERED: missing, beloved dog is found!
>>> I don't know why Susan sent to me instead of to List, but I just got
>>> this in my inbox with the List subject line and reply quote from Susan
>>> Hutchinson:
>>>
>>> Momentary intervention from a quiet one (recently anyway) ... the poem
>>> High Flight is featured on the modern freestanding altar at Trinity
>>> College Chapel in Toronto -- as Marion will attest. The altar was
>>> commissioned as a memorial to members of the college who died in WWII.
>>>
>>> blessings
>>> Susan
>>> always praying, but less able to intervene in the conversation these
>>> days ...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2/19/16 1:54 PM, Sibyl Smirl wrote:
>>>> Oh, as an Army Brat of Japan yourself (though he was more of a
>>>> Missionary Brat, a PK) you might appreciate that he was born in
>> Shanghai
>>>> in 1922, and got his early education at the American School in Nanking,
>>>> going to England with his mother in 1931.  It's possible that he was
>>>> inspired to get into the military as soon as he was old enough from
>>>> reading/hearing about the 1937-38 Rape of Nanking (a town he'd have
>>>> remembered)?
>>>>
>>>> On 2/19/16 1:07 PM, Sibyl Smirl wrote:
>>>>> On 2/19/16 10:12 AM, Grace Cangialosi wrote:
>>>>>> Well, if there was a leap, it was totally unconscious--I don't think
>> I
>>>>>> ever heard of John McGee. Thanks for the info.
>>>>>
>>>>> He didn't have a large body of published work, just the one poem he
>>>>> wrote down, which survived him.  It was printed in church publications
>>>>> by his father, then curate of St John's Episcopal Church in
>> Washington,
>>>>> DC  He died at the age of 19 in 1941 in England in a crash of his
>>>>> Spitfire, a pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee,_Jr.
>>>>>
>>>>> High Flight
>>>>>
>>>>>    "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 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."
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sibyl Smirl
>>> I will take no bull from your house!  Psalms 50:9a
>>> mailto:polycarpa3 at ckt.net
>>>