Pablo on his choice:

"Ronald Reagan borrowed phrases from the first and last lines when he eulogized the astronauts who died in the Space Shuttle. That must be the unremembered source of the phrase “surly bonds of earth” which was in my head and recurred to me while reading some of the early Lovecraft stories – like the ones with protagonist Randolph Carter -- which are more escapist fantasy than horror, treating of the dream-world travelers escaping from the mundane. But the poem itself is about the very real experience of an airplane pilot."

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 falls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor eer 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 Gillespe Magee