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!

My first thought for the “poems about flying” theme was Randall Jarell’s devastating “Death of a Ball Turret Gunner.” I see Minstrels has already printed it. so I went for the complete opposite in emotional impact.

“The Swing” was the first poem I learned about flying. It just captures for me so perfectly the lovely feeling of soaring which children have on swings. I remember being quite small and my mother reciting it to me as she pushed me higher and higher. I did the same with my own kids. So many of RLS’s poems in A Child’s Garden of Verses sound so fresh and real today. I think that since his subject matter is often universal, the poems don’t seem dated in the way that some children’s verse can.

— Dale

Links

Biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Louis_Stevenson

A Child’s Garden of Verses:
http://www.bartleby.com/188/