Not Waving but Drowning Not Waving but Drowning "Not Waving but Drowning" is a poem by the British poet Stevie Smith. It was published in 1957 as part of a collection of the same title. The most famous of Smith's poems, it gives an account of a drowned man whose distressed thrashing in the water had been mistaken for waving. The poem was accompanied by one of Smith's drawings, as was common in her work. The poem's personal significance has been the topic of several pieces of literary criticism because Smith was treated for psychological problems. She contemplated suicide at the age of eight
The Highwayman (poem) in the pines gave me the first line." The poem was completed in about two days. The poem makes effective use of vivid imagery to describe surroundings; plus repetitious phrases to create the sense of a horseman riding at ease through the rural darkness to a lovers' tryst and soldiers marching down the same road to ambush him. "The Highwayman" is reputed to be "the best narrative poem in existence for oral delivery". Almost half a century later, Noyes wrote, "I think the success of the poem... was because it was not an artificial composition, but was written at an