The Swing

Robert Louis Stevenson

Table of contents

01 Emotion Check

02 The Swing

03 Knowledge Check

04 Activities
 01
What did you feel when
you were on a swing?
 02

The Swing
 Stanza 01
Who is
How do you like to go up in a swing, 3 speaking here?
Up in the air so blue? 2
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing 3
Ever a child can do! 2 A child on a
swing
How does the
speaker feel?

The child is happy because swinging is the

pleasantest thing and because he or she likes
seeing everything far below.
The rhyme
Rhyme is a widely used tool in poetry. It helps us create special
sounds and melodies at the end of words in a verse. There are two
types of rhyme you can use: assonant rhyme, which is based on the
vowels of the last syllable of the verse being alike, and consonant
rhyme, which seeks to match all the sounds of the last syllable of the
verse.

Can you identify the rhymes?

Swing-thing
Blue-do
Stanza 02 Why has the to show where the
speaker used speaker is; to draw
Up in the air and over the wall, “up in the attention to how
Till I can see so wide, air?” high the swing is
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside—

What does the speaker

Rivers, cattle and
see when they are high
the countryside
up in the air
The rhyme
So, what is the rhyme?

Wall-all
Wide-side
 What repetition do you
Stanza 03 notice in this poem?

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown— The repeated use of the
Up in the air I go flying again, phrase up in the air and the
Up in the air and down! repetition of down in the third
stanza.

What does the

rhythm indicate?

The rhythm helps you

imagine the back-and-
forth motion of a swing.
Food for thought!
The words green/again in the third stanza do not end with the same
sounds? Do you know why?

Those words would have rhymed in the poet’s native

Scottish dialect.
Where is the swing…?
● Close your eyes.
● Imagine you are on a swing
● Start swinging and imagine the scenery as described by the speaker
● Is the swing in the downward motion when you see the green garden
or upward?
Textbook Question
● Discuss exercise I and II
● Next class attempt Exercise III