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Oct. 13th, 2005 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mari4212I just got myself a box of Chez-its. I am now trying desperately not to eat them all in one sitting. This is all the fault of H_E and the obsession with Chez-its going on over there.
Oh, I should write about Thomas's Eagle Court. We held it at church, and it was fun and worth the work. There were a few things that really stuck out for me as special. One was that Thomas had Craig Trimble give a speech. Craig is a wonderful man, but he was born with cerebal palsy, and his speach is thus slurred. I thought it was wonderful that Thomas could see beyond the surface, and then decide to have Craig give the speech. I'd known he was raised to accept others as what they are, but the first time you really see someone you love acting like that without thinking twice really hits you.
Another thing that really hit me was watching my Uncle Ralph give the Eagle Oath. Because not only did Ralph give Thomas the oath, he also gave Thomas his own Eagle medal. Afterwards Aunt Cathy mentioned that they are looking for Grandaddy's medal, so that they can give him that one as well.
And Grandpa Clinch read a poem from his boy scout troup's traditional Eagle Courts. Thomas is the first person on the Clinch side to earn his Eagle Award, and so Grandpa Clinch finally got to read "High Flight" to someone from his family. Both he and my dad got a bit teary-eyed at that.
Oh, and just because it's too beautiful not to post, here's the text of "High Flight". The only change in the text is that when Grandpa Clinch read it at the Eagle Ceremony, he changed the words "or even" to "but only"
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 windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941
Oh, I should write about Thomas's Eagle Court. We held it at church, and it was fun and worth the work. There were a few things that really stuck out for me as special. One was that Thomas had Craig Trimble give a speech. Craig is a wonderful man, but he was born with cerebal palsy, and his speach is thus slurred. I thought it was wonderful that Thomas could see beyond the surface, and then decide to have Craig give the speech. I'd known he was raised to accept others as what they are, but the first time you really see someone you love acting like that without thinking twice really hits you.
Another thing that really hit me was watching my Uncle Ralph give the Eagle Oath. Because not only did Ralph give Thomas the oath, he also gave Thomas his own Eagle medal. Afterwards Aunt Cathy mentioned that they are looking for Grandaddy's medal, so that they can give him that one as well.
And Grandpa Clinch read a poem from his boy scout troup's traditional Eagle Courts. Thomas is the first person on the Clinch side to earn his Eagle Award, and so Grandpa Clinch finally got to read "High Flight" to someone from his family. Both he and my dad got a bit teary-eyed at that.
Oh, and just because it's too beautiful not to post, here's the text of "High Flight". The only change in the text is that when Grandpa Clinch read it at the Eagle Ceremony, he changed the words "or even" to "but only"
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 windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941
other poems by John Gillespie Magee
Date: 2005-10-14 04:45 pm (UTC)Dad
Sonnet to Rupert Brooke
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
We laid him in a cool and shadowed grove
One evening in the dreamy scent of thyme
Where leaves were green, and whispered high above —
A grave as humble as it was sublime;
There, dreaming in the fading deeps of light —
The hands that thrilled to touch a woman's hair;
Brown eyes, that loved the Day, and looked on Night,
A soul that found at last its answered Prayer...
There daylight, as a dust, slips through the trees.
And drifting, gilds the fern around his grave —
Where even now, perhaps, the evening breeze
Steals shyly past the tomb of him who gave
New sight to blinded eyes; who sometimes wept —
A short time dearly loved; and after, — slept.
Per Ardua
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
They that have climbed the white mists of the morning,
They that have soared, before the world's awake,
To herald up their foemen to them, scorning
The thin dawn's rest their weary folk might take.
Some that have left other mouths to tell the story
Of high blue battle — quite young limbs that bled;
How they had thundered up the clouds to glory,
Or fallen to an English field stained red.
Because my faltering feet would fail I find them
Laughing beside me, steadying the hand
That seeks their deadly courage — yet behind them
The cold light dies in that once brilliant land...
Do these, who help the quickened pulse run slowly,
Whose stern remembered image cools the brow —
Till the far dawn of Victory know only
Night's darkness, and Valhalla's silence now?
Re: other poems by John Gillespie Magee
Date: 2005-10-14 06:20 pm (UTC)