In keeping with the philosophy of the volume, Last of The Flock is written in the voice and with the sentiment of the ordinary person.
The poet meets a man who has been forced, through poverty, to sell his lambs and now, in tears, has come to the last one of his "precious flock" which he cradles in his arms.
The radical thinker and novelist, William Godwin, had attacked private property as a source of evil in Caleb Williams (1793). In this poem, however, Wordsworth associates possession with nobility of character, fine feeling and enduring loyalty to family and tradition.