Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the deserving. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold,—
His eyes are in his mind.What outward form and feature are
He guesseth but in part;
But what within is good and fair
He seeth with the heart.