A goodbye poem built around one repeated line, 'Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!', as a coach pulls away from a beloved farm. The refrain means a child can join in after just one hearing.
From A Child's Garden of Verses. See the whole collection.
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 swing:
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
About this poem
Full text confirmed: 'kissing hands, in chorus sing: Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!'; also names garden, meadow-gates, pump, stable, tree, swing, and hayloft.
A goodbye poem: children pile into a coach, kissing their hands to everything they're leaving behind, the garden, the swing, the stable, the meadow gates. It's one of the more wistful entries in A Child's Garden of Verses, written for the end of a stay rather than the start of one. Good for the last day of a holiday, or the day you move house.
Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition