This is a gloomy view of a young shipwrecked mariner sitting upon an isolated rock, benumbed with cold and abandoned to despair. Above his head hovers a kite, an emblem of his approaching fate. The picture illustrates lines from 'Summer' (1727) by the Scottish playwright and poet James Thomson (1670–1748), written whilst he was at Watts's Academy, a scientific institution. The poet was inspired by Sir Isaac Newton who died at the time. It comes from the second part of the poem 'The Seasons' (1730): 'Sad on the jutting eminence he sits, And views the main that ever toils below; Still fondly forming in the farthest verge, Where the round ether mixes with the wave, Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds; At evening, to the setting sun he turns A mournful eye, and down his dying heart Sinks helpless .