Children who paddle where the ocean bed shelves steeply Must take great care they do not, Paddle too deeply.' Thus spake the awful aging couple Whose heart the years had turned to rubble. But the little children, to save any brother, Let it in at one ear and out at the other.

She related that her preoccupation with death began when Stevie Smith was seven at a time when Stevie Smith was very distressed at being sent away from her mother. She also wrote nine volumes of poetry. In particular Stevie Smith asks how the necessity of fighting Fascism can be achieved without descending into the nationalism and dehumanisation that fascism represents.

Florence Margaret Smith known as Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971) was an English poet and novelist.