The title of McTaggart’s huge canvas is a quotation from a poem by Swinburne called At a Month’s End. It was published in 1878 and is an elegy for doomed love. This short passage demonstrates the connection between the poem, and McTaggart’s painting: ‘Hardly we saw the high moon hanging, Heard hardly through the windy night Far waters ringing, low reefs clanging, Under wan skies and waste white light. With chafe and change of surges churning, The clashing channels rocked and rang Large music, wave to wild wave timing And all the choral water sang.’