Explore "Song of the Aviator" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.