Dear reader, it has been related of St. Teresa that, without having ever studied the rules of prosody, she suddenly composed several stanzas of genuine and most refined poetry: an instance which evinces, very strikingly, the old yet ever new saying, that we do not become, but are born poets: nascuntur poetae.
    Do not ask me then, why and how it happened that I wrote poetry in a language, as it were, unknown to me: --I cannot tell myself! --But, if you insist and urge an answer, the only explanation I can give, though it may seem rather poetical, and satisfy but few, is this: --the spirit of one I knew not, I saw not, I saw not, but dearly felt and will never forget, a mystic and inwrapping spirit breathed within me; and my soul was sweetly wrought into a kind of rapture. I remember it well, it was, for the first time, in the month of May, the month of the blessed Mary,

    I was then as if irresistibly, though pleasingly, impelled to write in that unknown language; --an ethereal and serene atmosphere, a burning and luminous fluid, a mysterious dew of light, ros lucis, as sayeth the prophet Isaias, descending from heaven, pervaded my nervous, faint and feverish frame, and penetrated my very heart's core; --I felt oppressed; --I took my pen and wrote: --and thus was brought to light this little book of poetry; --thus bloomed spontaneously these Wild Flowers, which I now usher into the world.
    The verses I have been advised to publish are all that I ever wrote, and perhaps will ever write, in English, unless my mystic Muse, my invisible and heavenly messenger breathe again within me her enrapturing spirit of sacred love and poetry.
    During the last year, how often had I sighed and exclaimed, with the royal bard of Israel: who will give me the wings of the dove, and I will fly and be at rest? --I had sighed and longed for peace and solitude, for a dwelling-place in the remotest desert; but sighed and longed vainly, until the month of May. In that flowery and sunny month, I at last retired to Bayou Lacombe, my Thebaïs, the land of my mother and my boyhood's land, --my shelter and my nook; I fled from the dusty and tumultuous city, there to roam and muse, amidst balmy shrubs and odoriferous plants, in the lonely, ever-green and harmonious groves of aged oaks, dark cedars and lofty pines; --and there it was, during the lingering hours of twilight, while the mystic and mellowing hues of the sky were blending into slow-coming darkness, there it was that I felt the mysterious working of a poetical rapture, and was visited by the mild and swaying Messenger. Over my head was magnificently spread the blue and starry canopy, the trees of the forest were motionless, not a breath whispered through the moon-glittering leaves and the pensile moss, and nature stood absorbed in calm meditation; --all around, the watchful and restless songsters, the hidden and melancholy whip-poor-wills were heard, at a distance, alternately answering each other, in the deep, silent, still and awful solitude. Far from the city, separated from all society,

    I wrote to give way to a swelling spirit of depressing sorrow, of deep and discouraging sadness, --deep, concentrated and unsoothed by human sympathy: --and what could man do for one who has chosen God for his only friend, who cares so little about this low and narrow earth, this cold and fleeting world of dreams and shadow? --for one who says daily and hourly: "life is not unhappiness, whilst I am willing to suffer; yet how happy I should be to die! --Oh! how prolonged is my sojourn, my exile, in this dreary and unwatered wilderness! --Oh! when shall the love of God dissolve all earthly ties, and set free the heaven-aspiring soul?" --I wrote, because I could not do otherwise; my thoughts and feelings gushed forth and flowed, like a stream of living waters winding through the desert. Witnessed and heard by none, except by the friendly Indian, then did I exclaim at last, with moistened eyes and bounding heart, then did I cry out exultingly to the startling echoes: "O solitudes, how sweet and dear, how smiling and blest, how flowery and fruitful you seem, in your unlimited extent! The city is to me a gloomy prison, and you seem a paradise! Here, I meet and speak with God; here, I meet and walk with angels, as with brothers! --O desert-places, who has ever known you, and has not felt your charming loveliness and your delightful power; --and has not said: here, --here is the land of rest, flowing with milk and honey!" --And then only, by that sudden burst, by that uncontrolled and poetical effusion, then only was my heart relieved of its oppressive spirit of sadness, and my soul roused up and revived in its divine spirit of faith, of hope and love, --of study, prayer and enthusiasm.
    Were I to reap but that benefit from my verses, am I not greatly repaid for them? --What other recompense, if any, may I then desire and expect from the very few, from two or three congenial minds and hearts? --there is but one: --sympathy!
    To these I bring my desert blossoms, my Wild Flowers; and I give them for what they are, and what they ever will remain: The spontaneous productions of an exotic and uncultivated garden, --scentless, formless, soon to fade and be scattered by the cold and nipping breath of either public praise or fastidious censure.
    And now, what else can I say to you, dear reader, in conclusion of this short address; what can I say to close, unless it be that you may forget these Wild Flowers, after having perused them, as those you have so often met with, and looked upon but with indifference, when crossing a vast desert, and gazing around, as you sauntered, more heedless than a roving Indian, in the unbounded and bloomy prairies of the Far-West. Yet, should you, perchance, notice and cull but one of them, well pleased with its artless beauty and its wild perfume; and should you inshrine it in a fostering bosom, and kindly wrap it in the softest folds of an embalming memory, let my anticipated gratitude be here expressed; let it overflow my heart: we so seldom meet with that genial and sheltering benevolence, with that generous hospitality, in our days of cold, hard and unmerciful selfishness.