sail as peacefully to the "eternal Ocean" at death. The action of Wordsworth's poem therefore takes place in an already established moral landscape. Its retrospective mood draws on a particularly 18th century emotional sensibility also found in Edward Jerningham's description of the ruins, with their natural adornments of moss and 'flow'rets', and reflected in J. M. W. Turner's watercolour of them. Wordsworth's preference in his poem is for the broader picture rather than human detail, but otherwise it fits seamlessly within its contemporary literary and aesthetic context. References Bibliography Durrant, Geoffrey. William Wordsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) External links Wordsworth biography and works Online Text of Poem Poetry by William Wordsworth 1798 poems