High o'er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,
The God a clearer space for Heav'n design'd;
Where fields of light, and liquid aether flow;
Purg'd from the pondrous dregs of Earth below.
Ovid
Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you long to return. - Leonardo da Vinci
A fiery chariot floats on airy pinions
Hither to me! I feel prepared to flee
Along a new path, piercing ether's vast dominions
To other spheres of pure activity.
This lofty life, this ecstasy divine! GOETHE
Ariel: "...I come To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly, To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride On the curled clouds, to thy strong bidding task Ariel and all his quality" (...) "There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily."
Impressions It is a difficult task to convey to one who has never enjoyed aerial flight a clear perception of the exhilarating pleasure of the elastic motion. The elevation above the ground loses its terror, because we have learned by experience what sure dependence may be placed upon the buoyancy of the air. Gradual increase of the extent of these lofty leaps accustoms the eye to look unconcernedly upon the landscape below. To the mountain climber the uncomfortable sensation experienced in trusting his foot into a slippery notch cut in the ice or to a treacherous rubble above deep abysses, with others dangers of the most terrifying nature, may often tend to lessen the enjoyment of the magnificent scenery. The dizziness caused by this, however, has nothing in common with the sensation experienced by him who trusts himself to the air; for the air demonstrates its buoyancy in not only separating him from the depth below, but also keeping him suspended over it. Resting upon the broad wings of a well-tested flying machine, which, yielding to the least pressure of the body, obeys our directions: surrounded by air and supported only by the wind, a feeling of absolute safety soon overcomes that of danger. Otto Lilienthal
"How doth the hero strong and brave,
A celestial path in the heavens pave."
"Lisa Simpson"
Na-He-La-Ta-Teh (poem by Crazy Bear Yaqui, 1973 San Francisco)
Great Spirit, Grandfather, there is no other God but you,
maker of all things, hear me.
This day I come to ask permission from my winged brothers
of the air, that I too may fly as they do.
From my brother the Condor, teach me to soar as you do...
From my brother the Eagle, teach me to fly as high as you...
From my brother the Hawk, teach me to be alert
and quick as you are...
And from you, Spirit of the Winds, all I ask is
that you be kind to us.
To lift us into your arms and put us down gently,
for it is you that determines our day.
Mother Earth, just as the Winged of the Air your children,
land softly upon your face: I will try the same.
Great Spirit, Grandfather, watch over me and my brothers
as you watch over the Winged of the Air,
as we are about to join them in their domain.
With the soil from which all things are made of, and the wind
that will give us wings. I christen thee,
"Na-He-La Ta-Teh" (Wind Spirit).
MACBETH:
Banquo, thy soul's flight,
If it find heaven, must find it out to-night.
=====
LADY MACDUFF:
His flight was madness: when our actions do not,
Our fears do make us traitors...
All is the fear and nothing is the love;
As little is the wisdom, where the flight
So runs against all reason.
=====
King Lear:
But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,
Thou'ldst meet the bear i' the mouth. When the
mind's free,
The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there.
Poet:
But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind.
JULIA:
To measure kingdoms with ... feeble steps;
Much less shall she that hath Love's wings to fly,
And when the flight is made to one so dear,
Of such divine perfection,
QUEEN ELIZABETH:
If yet your gentle souls fly in the air
And be not fix'd in doom perpetual,
Hover about me with your airy wings
SAY:
And seeing ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven,
Unless you be possess'd with devilish spirits,
CLIFFORD:
So doves do peck the falcon's piercing talons;...
The common people swarm like summer flies;
And whither fly the gnats but to the sun?
KING JOHN
Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels,
And fly like thought
TAMORA
Is the sun dimm'd, that gnats do fly in it?
The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby,
Knowing that with the shadow of his wings
He can at pleasure stint their melody:
Alarum. Cry within, 'fly, fly, fly!'
And extreme fear can neither fight nor fly,
Who, angry that the eyes fly from their lights,
======
Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly,
Wildly determining which way to fly,
Wagg'd up and down, and from his lips did fly
Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly
=====
O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly,
Shakespeare
Before thir eyes in sudden view appear
The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark
Illimitable Ocean without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth,
And time and place are lost; where eldest Night
And CHAOS, Ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal ANARCHIE, amidst the noise
Of endless warrs and by confusion stand.
For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce
Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring
Thir embryon Atoms;
(...)
CHAOS Umpire sits,
And by decision more imbroiles the fray
By which he Reigns: next him high Arbiter
CHANCE governs all. Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pondering his Voyage;
(...)
At last his Sail-broad Vannes
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoak
Uplifted spurns the ground, thence many a League
As in a cloudy Chair ascending rides
Audacious, but that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuitie: all unawares
Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fadom deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of som tumultuous cloud
Instinct with Fire and Nitre hurried him
As many miles aloft: that furie stay'd,
Quencht in a Boggie SYRTIS, neither Sea,
Nor good dry Land: nigh founderd on he fares,
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
Half flying; behoves him now both Oare and Saile.
As when a Gryfon through the Wilderness
With winged course ore Hill or moarie Dale,
Pursues the ARIMASPIAN, who by stelth
Had from his wakeful custody purloind
The guarded Gold: So eagerly the fiend
Ore bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,
And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flyes:
"The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,
Escap't the STYGIAN Pool, though long detain'd
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne
With other notes then to th' ORPHEAN Lyre
I sung of CHAOS and ETERNAL NIGHT,
Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,..."
Milton
HIGH FLIGHT
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr
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 halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even 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.
Tibetan-
mkha' rgyu'i yi dwags - air-dwelling hungry ghost / preta, hungry ghost living in the air
mkha' la rgyu ba'i yi dwags - the pretas living in the air.
To the jyotishis, Vedic magi, skywatching was a form of darshan, the direct vision of the divine.
Bharadwaj's Vedic volume titled "Anshubodhini" has a special chapter on aircraft.
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. - Groucho Marx
MicroAviation
Living
in the SkyDemonology of LiftFAA
Suppliment to the Poem "High Flight"Bipedal Ornithopter UAVHigh Performance Robot AirshipIndia's
Tradition of Flying Machines
Thanks for flying
