Poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Song of the Aviator

You may thrill with the speed of your thoroughbred steed,
You may laugh with delight as you ride the ocean,
You may rush afar in your touring car,
Leaping, sweeping, by things that are creeping-
But you never will know the joy of motion
Till you rise up over the earth some day,
And soar like an eagle, away-away.

High and higher above each spire,
Till lost to sight is the tallest steeple,
With the winds you chase in a valiant race,
Looping, swooping, where mountains are grouping,
Hailing them comrades, in place of people.
Oh! vast is the rapture the birdman knows,
As into the ether he mounts and goes.
He is over the sphere of human fear;
He has come into touch with things supernal.
At each man’s gate death stands await;
And dying, flying, were better than lying
In sick-beds, crying for life eternal.
Better to fly half-way to God
Than to burrow too long like a worm in the sod.

1. At the Boro Boedoer
2. St. Dunstan's
3. Sonnets of Sorrow. 18. The wise ones tell me that my heart's wild clamour
4. Applause
5. At Eleusis

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