Swing Song
Here I go up in my swingEver so high.I am the King of the fields, and the KingOf the town.I am the King of the earth, and the KingOf the sky.Here I go up in my swing....Now I go down.
About this text
Swing Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from Now We Are Six, Project Gutenberg ebook #70516; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: A. A. Milne, Swing Song, in Now We Are Six (1927), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70516, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/milne-now-we-are-six/swing-song.html, id L27243.
Form and metre
Swing Song is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABACABAC. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABACABAC swingA · highB · kingA · townC · kingA · skyB · swingA · downC
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Here I go up in my swing | 7 | ······· |
| Ever so high. | 4 | /˘·· |
| I am the King of the fields, and the King | 10 | ·········· |
| Of the town. | 3 | ··· |
| I am the King of the earth, and the King | 10 | ·········· |
| Of the sky. | 3 | ··· |
| Here I go up in my swing.... | 7 | ······· |
| Now I go down. | 4 | ···· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.