John Gillespie Magee Jr. - World War 2 Poet died at the age of 19

[Julie]

Magee's manuscript of "High Flight", mailed to his parents, signed and dated 3 September 1941 ("3•IX•41"). He would die three months later.
Note that this version has had the Library of Congress markings digitally removed, to more closely resemble this letter's appearance when it was received by the Magee parents (click on this image to see the original).

Per Ardua

 (To those who gave their lives to England during the Battle of Britain and left such a shining example to us who follow, these lines are dedicated.)

They that have climbed the white mists of the morning;
They that have soared, before the world's awake,
To herald up their foeman 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?

Shortly after Magee's first combat action on 8 November 1941, he sent his family part of another poem, referring to it as "another trifle which may interest you". It is possible that the poem Per Ardua is the last that Magee wrote. There are several corrections to the poem made by Magee, which suggest that it was not completed when he sent it. Per ardua ad astra("Through adversity to the stars") is the motto of a number ofCommonwealthair forces, such as the Royal Air Force, RAAF, RNZAF and theRCAF. It was first used in 1912 by the newly formed Royal Flying Corps.

John Gillespie Magee Jr. (9 June 1922 – 11 December 1941) was a World War II Anglo-American Royal Canadian Air Forcefighter pilot and war poet, who wrote the sonnet "High Flight". He was killed in an accidental mid-air collision over England in 1941.

Wikipedia ~ John Gillespie Magee Jr 

Sonnet to Rupert Brooke

"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."

On 11 December 1941, in his tenth week of active service, Magee was killed while flying Spitfire VZ-H (Serial No. AD291, the same aircraft he had flown in the engagement with the Luftwaffe over France four weeks earlier)