They never believed that I would do such a fatiguing
and unheard-of thing until I really left.
But Poland has always beckoned me like a friend--a friend which
combined all the poetry, romance, fascination, nobility, and honor of
a first love. If the Pole is proud, he has something to be proud of.
His honor has dignity. His country's sorrows touch the heart. Polish
literature has sentiment, her music has fire, her men of genius stand
out like heroes, her women are adorable. Balzac describes not only one
but a not infrequent type when he dedicates _Modeste Mignon_ "To a
Polish Lady" in the most exquisite apostrophe which ever graced the
entrance-hall to one of the noblest novels of this inimitable master.
"Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through love, witch through
fancy, child by faith, aged by experience, man in brain, woman in
heart, giant by hope, mother through sorrow, poet in thy dreams, to
Thee belongs this book, in which thy love, thy fancy, thy experience,
thy sorrow, thy hope, thy dreams, are the warp through which is shot a
woof less brilliant than the poesy of thy soul, whose expression when
it shines upon thy countenance is, to those who love thee, what the
characters of a lost language are to scholars.
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