I loved this poem so much when I was a 9 yr old girl, I set it to music and would sing it while on the swing in our backyard. I sang it to my children when they were small and to this day, they remember this poem as a song.
The Swing
by: Robert Louis Stevenson
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!
Made me think of Invictus by W.E. Henley. My fave poem. Maybe my only poem. He was a good friend of Robert Stevenson. Henley had some kind of tuberculosis and lost his leg. Almost lost his other one too but was treated by another doctor and his leg was saved. Stevenson created Long John Silvers from Henley's persona - and his looks too, I suppose.
Henley lost his daughter when she was very young. Her persona was also inspired and captured by another good friend in the book Peter Pan, the brave child who flies about and never ages.
W.E. Henley wrote this while recovering from his leg amputation. I read this out loud as eulogy at my dad's funeral.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.