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The year is 2119. Things are not going well on the planet. Vast areas are flooded as a result of a catastrophic nuclear accident. And the inhabitants of this dystopian future look with fascination at the dawn of the 21st century, which they see as an era of cultural splendor. This is the view of Thomas Metcalfe, a solitary academic researcher investigating what happened at the so-called Second Immortal Dinner, held in 2014. It was the second because literary annals record an earlier dinner with that name, which in 1817 brought together William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Charles Lamb, among other luminaries of their time. Almost two hundred years later, the celebrated poet Francis Blundy and his wife Vivien convened another gathering at which Francis read aloud a love poem written in homage to his wife, entitled "A Crown for Vivien." That composition, of which no copy survives, is the focus of Thomas Metcalfe's research because it could provide key information about the past. What happened to the text? What did it offer? Some kind of coded message? Any incriminating clues? What was the couple's relationship really like, celebrated in that written gift of love?