A spectacular quote...

[MattGoldman]

Does anyone know who said this? Thanks a bunch!

“We will never forget them,
Nor the last time we saw them,
As they prepared for their journey and, waved goodbye,
And, slipped the sir ill bonds of earth, to touch the face of god.”

[Kep]

That's an excerpt from `High Flight,' a sonnet written by John Gillespie Magee. It was made famous (again) when President Regan quoted it after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.

Here's the whole piece:

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.

[Threadkiller]

Cool, I didn't know that.

I remembered it from a Bloom County comic by Berke Breathed in which Opus recites that poem. Couldn't find it though.

[Threadkiller]

Here it is. (http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/7207/hiflt.html)

[MattGoldman]

Thank's man, I appreciate it! I can't even explain to you how long that's been bugging me!

[psychofiend]

"I can get a hell of a good look at a T-Bone by sticking my head up a bull's ass, but I'd rather take the butcher's word for it."
Now there is a quote.