Mary Gilmore's Little Shoes That Died

The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore: Mary Gilmore was Australia's foremost woman poet during the first half of the twentieth century and it was as a poet that she wanted to be remembered when she died in 1962. More attention however has been given in recent years to her long and eventful life, her role as feminist, her championing of Australian literature as an instrument of national identity and her activism for various forms of social justice.

'The Little Shoes That Died': Also included in the anthology Hell and After (2005) edited by Les Murray:

These are the little shoes that died.
     We could not keep her still,
But all day long her busy feet
     Danced to her eager will.

Leaving the body's loving warmth,
     The spirit ran outside;
Then from the shoes they slipped her feet,
     And the little shoes died.