 Gibbons always considered herself a serious poet rather than a comic writer . She published two collections of poetry in the 1930s , the latter of which , The Lowland Verses ( 1938 ) contains " The Marriage of the Machine " , an early lament on the effects of industrial pollution : " What oil , what poison lulls / Your wings and webs , my cormorants and gulls ? " Gibbons 's single children 's book was the fairy tale collection The <unk> Gnome , published in 1935 and dedicated to her only child Laura , who was born that year . 
