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Challenger mission

Teacher in Space · Mission 51-L · Jan 28, 1986 · Aftermath

High Flight

On the evening of January 28, 1986, President Reagan spoke to a grieving nation. Broadcast at 5:00 p.m., his address concluded with a brief quotation from High Flight, a poem originally published in 1942: "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'"

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-spilt 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.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
High Flight originally appeared in the New York Herald Tribune, February 8, 1942.