Not Waving but Drowning Not Drowning, Waving takes their name from the poem. The underground '90s emo-hardcore act I Hate Myself recorded a song with the same name on their album 10 Songs. A track on Julian Cope's 1991 album "Peggy Suicide" was titled "Not Raving but Drowning" after the poem. The poem was also set to music by singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt on his debut album Little with a spoken introduction from a Stevie Smith recording. Singer and songwriter Tanita Tikaram set the poem to music in her song titled "Not Waving but Drowning" which appeared as a b-side to her single "I Might
The Lost Leader (poem) was widely anthologised, and recognised for its direct attack. One editor wrote: Another wrote that the verses "have more bad feeling than poetry". Stephen Fry quotes the poem as an example of the use of dactylic metre to great effect, creating verse with "great rhythmic dash and drive". The poem is not in pure dactylic tetrameter, but catalectic. There was much discussion on whether the poem was addressed to Wordsworth. In response to queries, Browning always made it clear that the poem was based on Wordsworth, but stopped short of saying that it was directly addressed to Wordsworth himself, instead