Poet’s Corner · Poem · 1 min

The Swing

Robert Louis Stevenson — A Child's Garden of Verses, 1885

A minute of going up — a rope swing hanging in an old walled garden, then up over the wall to rivers and trees and cattle and all, down onto the brown roof, and up into the blue again.

An English walled garden and the summer countryside beyond — hedgerows, a river, a stone bridge, the open sky

The words

How do you like to go up in a swing,Up in the air so blue?Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thingEver a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,Till I can see so wide,Rivers and trees and cattle and allOver the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,Down on the roof so brown—Up in the air I go flying again,Up in the air and down!

What to listen for

Three verses, and the whole poem is one swing: up in the first, out over the wall in the second, and up-and-down again at the end. Read it aloud and you can hear the rocking — the long line, then the short one, over and over, like the rope taking your weight and giving it back.

Notice how little Stevenson describes. He never tells you the colour of the swing or the name of the garden. Instead he gives you a list — rivers and trees and cattle and all — which is exactly what you see when you are moving too fast to look properly. That rushed little list is the poem's best trick.

It comes from A Child's Garden of Verses, written by a man who spent much of his childhood ill in bed. Almost every poem in the book is about getting out: onto a swing, into a boat, up into the air. Which is why the last line is not a full stop so much as a promise — and down, and up again.

Public domain. Reading and film made for Planet Neverland.

← Back to Poet’s Corner