Raise from your bed of languor Raise from your bed of dismay Your friends will not come tomorrow As they did not come today You must rely on yourself, they said, You must rely on yourself, Oh but I find this pill so bitter said the poor man As he took it from the shelf Crying, O sweet Death come to me Come to me for company, Sweet Death it is only you I can Constrain for company.

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.