Adieu

This is apparently the only surviving manuscript of the poem. The date of 1850 must be conjectural, given any lack of other identifying documentary information beyond DGR's pencil note at the foot of the first page. The latter suggests that the ballad is an early composition that DGR later considered again, perhaps in 1869, for publication.

The presence at the end of the manuscript of the beginning of another ballad clearly shows that this manuscript page was originally part of a more extensive document that contained at least the two poems shown here. The conclusion of the second ballad is not known.