Former Premier Dr. David Saul dubbed her "the hat lady'', and indeed Cecile Musson Smith says she has worn many, many "hats'' in her lifetime covering everything from secretary to business woman to educator, poet, writer, civic worker, and more.

To accurately detail Mrs. Smith's long list of honours and accomplishments would take a book; suffice it to say that her life has been one long journey of endless discovery, creativity, endeavour and zeal. In this profile, the focus is on her poetry and its rewards.

Born on August 13, 1914 and raised in a household where reading, writing poetry, and other aspects of education, were the norm, Mrs. Smith recalls being hoisted onto her aunt Fanny's knee at the age of two and read to. From age three, she was reading herself, and by age four she says she began reading "big books''.

Not only did that early childhood introduction to literature create a lifelong love of reading, but her father's continuous outpouring of topical poetry on all manner of subjects, ranging from the death of Queen Victoria to the post-Coronation visit of The Queen and Prince Philip to the Island, also created the spark that would ultimately become a passionate flame.

Indeed, Cecile Norma Musson, whose sister Flora was also a poet, wrote her first poems as a teenager. In high school, she remembers standing in a long line with her fellow students reading aloud, and also memorising poetry.

"I became an elocutionist through learning poetry by heart,'' Mrs. Smith says.

In 1927, while in her twenties, her first collection of poetic thoughts, Zephyrs, was published and caused quite a stir since she chose to put just one "thought'' on a page.

"The then-Mid-Ocean News editor Terence Chalk likened my work to that of a well-known East Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore,'' Mrs. Smith relates.

That early recognition would be the first of many future occasions when her work was printed and/or honoured.

Meanwhile, Zephyrs was sold around the Island for two shillings and six pence.

Later, a second printing would raise funds for the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund -- the result of Ms Musson having fallen in love with the survivor of a submarine attack off Bermuda during the Second World War.

Another conflict inspired the penning of Impact -- this time in 1969, when a young Czechoslovakian, Jan Pallach, committed suicide in public to protest the Soviet invasion of his country.

" Impact called on the soul of the world to rise in spiritual protest against the invasion,'' Mrs. Smith explains.

"I felt like I was a woman waiting for a child to be born. Eventually, I sent it to the International Biographical Centre in Cambridge, England who gave me an award for it, and also listed me in the 1970/71 Who's Who in Poetry.'' Impact was also published in the Barbados magazine, BIM, and because the British Broadcasting Corporation had what Mrs. Smith calls "a literary linkage with Barbados'', the poem was also read over its airwaves.

"The BBC paid me ten shillings less tax,'' the poet laughs.

Another poem, The Muse, was printed in the 1940 edition of the World's Fair Anthology of Verse, USA, edited by Paul Emory Carter.

More and more the road to international recognition was opening up before her, and the poet's pen was never still.

In the early 1950s, the then-Ms Musson compiled The Bermuda Review, which contained not only a summary of happenings in education, clubs, religion and Parliament, but also recorded births, deaths, students abroad and more. Alas, it was discontinued for economic reasons.

In 1955, Cecile Musson became the wife of J.A.C. Smith, and two years later founded the Bermuda Writers' Club. Among its members was fellow poet and friend Geraldine Johnson, whose work was also published by BIM and used by the BBC.

Later, Mrs. Smith would become a founding member of the Bermuda Arts Council, and also serve as the Writers' Club representative.

When the internationally-known black poet Langston Hughes, author of Raisin in the Sun, came to Bermuda, he visited the Writers' Club and complimented its members on their fine work.

"We asked him if he would come back to visit the Writers Club, but he said, `I am three years behind in my engagements', and he eventually died,'' Mrs.

Smith remembers.

In the United States, radio station WEVD aired a regular programme called Enjoyment of Poetry. During Bermuda's 375th anniversary celebrations, Florence Becker Lennon came to Bermuda and taped an interview with two of Bermuda's most prolific poets: Mrs. Agnes Tucker and Mrs. Smith.

"We were living our dream,'' says the woman who wrote a poem in honour of the 375th anniversary.

Further dreams would come true, thanks to the Centro Studi E Scambi Internationali Leonardo da Vinci (CSSI), of Rome, Italy, of which local artist Charles Lloyd Tucker was an honorary local representative, as were Mrs. Agnes Tucker and Mrs. Smith, in successive order.

A centre for cultural and scientific exchange, CSSI welcomed submissions by Bermuda's poets and writers, and Mrs. Smith was successful in getting some of her work published by them.

During her own visit to Italy in 1965, she was inspired to write a poem about the Eternal City entitled, Date with the Past , which so impressed CSSI that she was awarded its International Great Prize: The Glory.

In the same year she received CSSI's Medal of Honour and Diploma of Merit, each in recognition of her contribution to the arts.

As the years rolled by, the honours and accolades continued to roll in, and Mrs. Smith kept her poetic juices flowing.

In 1988 United Poets Laureate International presented Mrs. Smith with its Certificate of Merit "in recognition and appreciation of excellence on poetry for world brotherhood and peace''.

Her poem When I Began was published in 1994 in Poetic Voices of America -- and was described by her personal editor at the Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum Inc. as "enchanting''.

But perhaps the nicest gift of all came on her 85th birthday last year when Mrs. Smith learned that her name and biography were again being included in the 1999/2000 edition of The International Who's Who of Poetry.

Today, in leafing through the gold-edged pages of the magnificently-bound tome, she allows herself a smile: "The Who's Who is published by the International Biographical Centre in Cambridge, England, and my name is in there right alongside Derek Walcott, Nobel laureate Maya Angelou, as well Robert Frost, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson and Sappho.'' Given the enormous interest in poetry in Bermuda, Lifestyle asked Mrs. Smith what it took to write good poetry.

"Poetry is like a beat of the heart,'' she said. "It has to sing.'' POEM The following poem by Cecile Musson Smith was written in 1962 as she crossed the Atlantic on the Queen of Bermuda .

THE FOAM MAIDEN The Foam Maiden has dancing, silver, unpredictable hair Body of dream, parented by Ocean.

In calm water, undisturbed by ship or wind she dies.

Ever re-born, her life is timeless.

Sailing, I glory in her beauty, symmetry and fascination.

The wide horizon-curving sea is mine.

The day is fine, sun-warmed, zephyr-cooled.

Free from care am I, free from the need to do Only to be.

See the Sea-born Maiden curling, foaming, sizzling, piling, patterning, under-running, water-falling, galloping, subsiding, rolling, mottling as marble and veining, climbing as a fountain, shivering and leaping, in colour as smoke, a steel, as snow faster and faster with the ship she goes.

Smiling, I watch her, oblivious of all I and she alone on earth in unity.