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
Last Post (poem) me, guttering, choking, drowning". </poem> The title of Owen's poem is part of a line from the Roman poet Horace – "" ("It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country"). The phrase was inscribed over the chapel door at Sandhurst, the British military academy, in 1913. The phrase is again referenced when Duffy writes "Dulce — No — Decorum — No — Pro patria mori." The writer Will Heaven said that, whilst the poem denies that death in war is "sweet and proper" ("dulce et decorum"), it does not deny that the soldiers died for their country ("pro