On Poetry

Suppose a painter should at fancy's beck
Join to a human head a horse's neck,
And, bringing limbs of every beast together,
Stick on them plumes of parti-colored feather,
So that a woman beautiful and nesh
Should tail off to a shocking, ugly fish,
Could you, my friends, admitted to the sight,
Refrain from laughing at the thing outright?
Believe, my Pisos, such a sketch would be
The very moral of a book where we,
Should find the ideas vague, unreal, vain,
Like dreams disordered of a sick man's brain,
So neither head nor foot finds proper place
In form precise in any single case.

Always have painters, yea and poets too,
Been privileged whate'er they like to do.

From The Art of Poetry by Horace