I 1913 tager George sin collegeven, den aristokratiske digter Cecil med hjem på weekend. Også søsteren Daphne bliver besat af digteren, og da han som afsked skriver et digt til hende, aner ingen, hvilken betydning det får for de to familier

In the late summer of 1913 the aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance comes to stay at the home of his close Cambridge friend George Sawle. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for all the Sawles, but it is on George's sister Daphne that it will have most lasting impact, when Cecil writes her a poem which will become a touchstone for a generation. Linking the Sawle and Valance families irrevocably, the shared intimacies of this weekend become legendary events in a larger story, told and interpreted in different ways over the coming century