✦ A Classic Poem ✦
Up in the air and over the wall: a child on a swing sees rivers, trees, and cattle across the countryside. One of the most joyful poems ever written for children.
Read aloud by Storyland Classics ✦ 1 min 01 sec ✦ Watch on YouTube
✦ The Poem ✦
by Robert Louis Stevenson, from A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885). Public domain.
How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall, Till I can see so wide, Rivers and trees and cattle and all Over 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!
✦ About the Poem ✦
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is best known for Treasure Island and Kidnapped, but A Child’s Garden of Verses, published in 1885, may be his most loved book. He was often ill as a boy in Edinburgh and spent long days in bed, and these poems remember childhood from the inside, in a child’s own voice.
Read “The Swing” aloud and you can feel its rhythm rise and fall like a swing going up and coming back. The child’s view grows wider with every push, from over the wall to the whole countryside, and then the last line brings everything “up in the air and down.”
✦ Talk About It ✦