High Flight is a sonnet composed by WW2 fighter pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr, who in sending it in a letter to his parents  described how he had begun the poem "whilst descending from 40,000 feet" and completing it soon after landing. He was killed in  action a few weeks after his 19th birthday. This setting was written for the choir of Rugby Parish Church and first performed there on Battle of Britain Sunday in 2004.