Numbr 246; Robert Louis Stevenson "The Swing"

The Swing

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!

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

Hap Notes: Well, what is like being on a swing– that remarkable, vertiginous feeling as the world swirls around you as you glide up to the sky? Remember the first time you went a little too high? That amazing feeling of breaking, just for a moment, the grip of gravity?

No matter your age, a swing is a wonderful thing to be on in the summer-time. Stevenson's verse actually swings along as you read it, doesn't it?

It's Saturday so here's our cartoons to go with the poem.

First is Bullwinkle (of Rocky and Bullwinkle) reading today's poem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqG8DuA5As&playnext=1&list=PL49E145C413A0CA24

Here's a very clever Walter Lanz cartoon (I love the description of what gets sold at the Black Market), a Swing Symphony called "The Greatest Man in Siam" (Siam btw is what Thailand was called until 1949.) : www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEUuBrxNgn4

You don't have to be a child to enjoy the playground: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekfsa380S-s

Here are Astaire and Rogers in "Swing Time": www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxPgplMujzQ

A remarkable Fleischer cartoon, "Swing You Sinners!": www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b8isnhYMjg

One of my favorite cartoons, Recess, features Swinger Girl who may or may not have "gone over the top." /www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8ocsjLh9OM

and of course, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDQpZT3GhDg

Here is where we have talked about Stevenson before:
happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/number-196-robert-louis-stevenson.html

and here: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-21-robert-louis-stevenson-after.html

The masthead is Ben Shahn's "Liberation." Painted in 1945, it shows the playfulness of children who have lived through some grim circumstances, and while they look a bit grim themselves, they still find the spirit to swing.