To the few who love me and whom I love—to those who feel rather than to
those who think—to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in
the only realities—I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of
Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting
it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone:—let
us say as a Romance; or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a
Poem.
_What I here propound is true_:—therefore it cannot die:—or if by any
means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will “rise again to the
Life Everlasting.”
Nevertheless it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged
after I am dead.