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 Task (poem) movement of its author's time." In a letter Robert Burns wrote, Is not "The Task" a glorious poem? The religion of "The Task", bating a few scraps of Calvinistic divinity, is the religion of God and Nature: the religion that exalts, that ennobles man. He is said to have loved the poem enough to have habitually walked about with a copy in his pocket. The poem is extensively quoted in the novels of Jane Austen, and has been seen as deeply influential on her. The conversational diction of the Lake Poets' works can be seen as stemming directly from "The