Modeste Mignon

Daughter of an enslaved land, an angel in your love, a demon in your imagination, a child in faith, an old man in experience, a man in brain, a woman in heart, a giant in hope, a mother in suffering, a poet in your dreams, and Beauty itself withal⁠—this work, in which your love and your fancy, your faith, your experience, your suffering, your hopes, and your dreams, are like chains by which hangs a web less lovely than the poetry cherished in your soul⁠—the poetry whose expression when it lights up your countenance is, to those who admire you, what the characters of a lost language are to the learned⁠—this work is yours.