acrylic on board

A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885) by Robert Louis Stevenson
Farewell to the Farm

The coach is at the door at last;
The eager children, mounting fast
And kissing hands, in chorus sing:
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!

To house and garden, field and lawn,
The meadow-gates we swang upon,
To pump and stable, tree and swing,
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!

And fare you well for evermore,
O ladder at the hayloft door,
O hayloft where the cobwebs cling,
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!

Crack goes the whip, and off we go;
The trees and houses smaller grow;
Last, round the woody turn we sing:
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
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Public domain text taken from The Poets’ Corner: http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/rls02.html#1

Swanston Cottage
Swanston nestles at the end of the Pentland Hills, which stretch south of Edinburgh. Today, it overlooks the busy Edinburgh City Bypass, and is itself overlooked by the Hillend artificial ski slope. But in 1867, when the Stevenson family rented Swanston Cottage as a holiday home, it was in a remote hamlet. However, today Swanston still retains much of its old-world charm, and of all Stevenson’s Lothian homes it was perhaps his best-loved.