<Dd> New sight to blinded eyes; who sometimes wept--</Dd> <Dd> A short time dearly loved; and after,--slept ." </Dd> <P> John Gillespie Magee was born in Shanghai, China, to an American father and a British mother, who both worked as Anglican missionaries . His father, John Magee Sr., was from a family of some wealth and influence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania . Magee Senior chose to become an Episcopal priest and was sent as a missionary to China . Whilst there he met his future wife, Faith Emmeline Backhouse, who came from Helmingham in Suffolk and was a member of the Church Missionary Society . Magee's parents married in 1921, and their first child, John Junior, was born 9 June 1922, the eldest of four brothers . </P> <P> Magee began his education at the American School in Nanking in 1929 . In 1931 he moved with his mother to England and spent the following four years at St Clare, a preparatory school for boys, in Walmer, in the county of Kent . From 1935 to 1939 he attended Rugby School, where he developed the ambition to become a poet, and whilst at the school won its Poetry Prize in 1938 . He was impressed by the school's Roll of Honour listing its pupils who had fallen in the First World War, which included the Edwardian poet Rupert Brooke (1887--1915), whose writing style Magee emulated . Brooke had won the school's Poetry Prize 34 years prior to Magee . The prize - winning poem by Magee centred upon Brooke's burial at 11 o'clock at night in an olive grove on the Greek island of Skyros in April 1915 . </P>

Who wrote i have slipped the surly bonds of earth