This battered page containing a dreamy love lyric in Percy Shelley’s hand survived the shipwreck that killed its creator. It was retrieved from the hull of Don Juan, Shelley’s new sailboat, after the boat foundered off the coast of Viareggio on July 8, 1822. From amid gaps and tears in the paper comes an evocation of fading song: “The wandering airs they faint / On the dark, the silent stream.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), fair copy of “The Indian Serenade,” 1821 or 1822. MA 814. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1907.