Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (Penguin Classic) - Google Book Search p7-8

He grew like an oak

He used to
follow the men ploughing
and, hurling clods of earth, chase after
the crows that flew off into the air.

He ate up the blackberries that grew by the ditches
guarded the turkeys with stick in hand,
helped with the harvesting,
ran about in the woods,
played hopscotch in the porch of the church on rainy days
and, on feast days, beseeched the sexton to let him
ring the bells
so as to hang with his whole weight
on the great rope

the bells - peeling - (no this maybe is not the translation I remember, that I arranged as a poem, though yes it certainly was a 'sexton' - not, for example, a 'beadle' - that Clare was impressed by my thinking of, wh I had not, Flaubert had ~ and the translator. but- did I change some words, add some words of my own: the bells - peeling - the rope swing - through the air ~ even now )


Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: Chapter One:
He went after the labourers the men ploughing, drove away with clods of earth the ravens that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the geese well was it geese or turkeys? hedges or ditches? with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in the woods hmm agreement, played hop-scotch under under or on the church porch on rainy days, and at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on hand, fresh of colour.

feel himself
- - - borne upward
- - - - - - - by it in its swing.
maybe. better than the other wh is feel hmslf pulled aloft by its travel - but - the rest of the other is better, and sure it was a sexton not a beadle. He had strong hands, a good color.