Among them was a framed copy of “High Flight,” the poem written by Royal Canadian Air Force pilot John Gillespie Magee, Jr. a few months before his death in a midair collision over England in 1941. First made famous during World War II, Magee’s sonnet would become a favorite of US military pilots and, later, of astronauts: Michael Collins had carried a copy on his first journey into space, aboard Gemini X, fourteen lines of verse typed onto a small file card by his wife, Pat:
