The dedication, the passion from the beginning, was engraved in me from the first moment I felt the first tremor of the child inside my Imagination. Since then, seven years have passed; the poem, over time, became more and more until it was born, as I present it now.

But the mind is one thing and the work is another. Now the work, as it stands on the threshold of its journey, seems foreign to me. I am more concerned about the flaws that I suspect it will hide, rather than the good things it may have.

All its unfinished and unpolished siblings still seem to me now as more shadowy. Then it was as if I had grown tired of it; I had other things on the road and I worked on them, and if it didn't inspire me for the printing of the Gypsy's Decalogue from some of its pieces that appeared in Numa, a great friend and worker of national progress and letters, Mr. A. Pallis, would still keep it in the drawer. Now that the excitement has passed, I think the father can speak about his child, whatever it may be; what sweeter speech than that!

I won't judge it, of course; but I may facilitate the criticism of others, if there is any criticism, that is willing to look at it.