Do Not!

By Stevie Smith 1902–1971 Stevie Smith

Do not despair of man, and do not scold him,

Who are you that you should so lightly hold him?

Are you not also a man, and in your heart

Are there not warlike thoughts and fear and smart?

Are you not also afraid and in fear cruel,

Do you not think of yourself as usual,

Faint for ambition, desire to be loved,

Prick at a virtuous thought by beauty moved?

You love your wife, you hold your children dear,

Then say not that Man is vile, but say they are.

But they are not. So is your judgement shown

Presumptuous, false, quite vain, merely your own

Sadness for failed ambition set outside,

Made a philosophy of, prinked, beautified

In noble dress and into the world sent out

To run with the ill it most pretends to rout.

Oh know your own heart, that heart's not wholly evil,

And from the particular judge the general,

If judge you must, but with compassion see life,

Or else, of yourself despairing, flee strife.

Source: The New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1988)

Biography

Calling Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning "the best collection of new poems to appear in 1957," Poetry contributor David Wright observed that "as one of the most original women poets now writing [Stevie Smith] seems to have missed most of the public accolades bestowed by critics and anthologists. One reason may be that not only does she belong to no 'school'—whether real or invented as they usually are—but her work is so . . .

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