This poem by Loius MacNiece started a sort of urbanish legend among those who did not know his life story.   The legend had it that this poem was written by an Allied Fighter pilot five weeks before he was killed in combat.   (Seems to make the poem somewhat more poignant, if that was ever necessary).   He did, in fact, live until 1963 and (as far as is recorded) never flew in a fighter aircraft in his life.

    The sunlight in the garden hardens and grows cold
    We cannot cage the moment in its nets of gold
    When all is told, we cannot beg for pardon

    Our freedom as free lances advances to its end
    The earth compels upon it, Bird and sonnet descend
    And soon my friend, there will be no time for dances

    The sky was good for flying defying the church bells
    And every iron siren and what it foretells
    The earth compels, We are dying, Egypt, dying

    And unable to beg for pardon, hardened in heart anew
    But grateful to have sat under thunder and lightning with you
    And grateful too, for sunlight in the garden.

(I quote from a long time ago with a memory that is perhaps flawed, the original words may not be 100% identical to those above, but they are pretty close).

Oh - and for what is worth - the talk in the RAF Messes in the early sixties was that the Sopwith Camel was the British pilot's favorite aircraft of world war 1, despite its tendency to kill novice pilots)