Poetry, according to Coleridge, is the product of imagination working on the objects of life and nature. It is an activity of imagination, idealizing the real and realising the ideal. As colours are to the art of painting, words are to the art of writing poetry. Again, as the combination of colours decide the pattern and quality of painting, so the arrangement of words aesthetically expressing the emotions and thoughts of the power decide the pattern an quality of poetry. But words arranged in the pattern of rhyme alone would not make poetry. The following lines, for example, have rhyming ending, but they do not make poetry:
"Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November."
The real soul of poetry lies in its power of expressing and arousing emotions. However, rhyme and rhythm add to the charm and pleasure of poetry. He says, "As a particular pleasure is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities, all compositions that have this charm super-added, whatever be their contents, may be entitled poems. But mere metre and rhyme, without imagination and emotion for their bases would not make poetry.
But it should be remembered that pleasure, and not truth is the immediate end of poetry. He does not believe that moral preaching is the ultimate end of poetry. It is true that metrical form of composition has more charm and pleasure. But they are merely apparel, and not the soul of poetry.
