Robert Louis Stevenson

The Swing

Summary


"The Swing" is a short children's poem by Robert Louis Stevenson that captures the pure delight of riding a swing high into the blue sky. With each arc upward, a child glimpses rivers, trees, cattle, and countryside rolling out below, then swoops back down over rooftops and garden greens. The poem pulses with breathless joy and the specific, vivid details of what a child actually sees and feels mid-flight — a fleeting, exhilarating taste of freedom.

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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,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside—

A young girl in a red dress soaring high on a wooden swing above green countryside, illustrating The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson.

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!

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Credits

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish poet, novelist, and essayist of the 19th century, best known for works such as *Treasure Island* and *Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde*. "The Swing" was published in his beloved 1885 poetry collection *A Child's Garden of Verses*, which drew on his own childhood memories to celebrate the small, vivid pleasures of being young.