A curse for poetry’s detractors
“But if (fie of such a but) you be born so near the dull-making cataract of Nilus that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry, if you have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or rather, by a certain rustical disdain, will become such a mome as to be a Momus of poetry; then, though I will not wish unto you the ass’s ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a poet’s verses (as Bubonax was) to hang himself, nor to be rhymed to death, as it is said to be done in Ireland; yet thus much curse I must send you in the behalf of all poets, that while you live, you live in love, and never get favor for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, you memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph.”
Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, 362 (page numbers refer to The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism)
