In a message about "poor old man Swift",
as regards Hazel's swing, I'd been unable to recall if
the poet mentions that a swing, tied to its branches, would grow
more distant from the ground with the passing years. Actually,
it was not Shade who noted this,
but Philip Wild, Flora's husband,in TOoL. On pages 269/270 we read:
"There was an old swing hanging from a branch of an old
oaktree...Its ropes looked sturdy enough...I now had to take a ladder to it, for
the sentimental relic was lifted out of human reach by the growth of the
picturesque but completely indifferent tree." After Wild climbs on
it "the cordage burst and I was hurled...into a ditch
full of brambles which ripped off a piece of the peacock blue dressing
down..."
It was Wild's fat half-sister (dead
before reaching puberty) who often used it and it was hanging in an
ideal spot for Wild's first
experiments.