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There is no art delivered to mankind that hath not the works of nature for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they depend... The physician weigheth the nature of a man's body, and the nature of things helpful or hurtful unto it.  And the metaphysic, though it be in the second and abstract notions, and therefore be counted supernatural, yet doth he indeed build upon the depth of nature.  Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the Heroes, Demigods, Cyclops, Chimeras, Furies, and such like: so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging only within the zodiac of his own wit.

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"It is an art (or whatever better term our language may afford) of representing, in words, external nature and human thoughts and affections, both relatively to human affections, by the production of as much immediate pleasure in parts, as is compatable with the largest sum of pleasure in the whole." (Coleridge, Lectures on Literature, 1811-12)

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“Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply... Our feelings will be connected with important subjects... We shall describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such a nature, and in such connection with each other, that the understanding of the being to whom we address ourselves must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections ameliorated.” (Wordsworth, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads)

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"A Poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not. The grammatical forms which express the moods of time, and the difference of persons and the distinction of place are convertible with respect to the highest poetry without injuring it as poetry and the choruses of Aeschylus, and the Book of Job, and Dante's Paradise would afford, more than any other writings, examples of this fact." (Shelley, A Defence of Poetry)

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I come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion, that poetry is "the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions."  I mean, by the noble emotions, those four principal sacred passions---Love, Veneration, Admiration, and Joy (this latter especially, if unselfish); and their opposites---Hatred, Indignation (or Scorn), Horror, and Grief,---this last, when unselfish, becoming Compassion.  These passions in their various combinations constitute what is called "poetical feeling," when they are felt on noble grounds, that is, on great and true grounds.

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"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

Poetry Quote by Robert Frost
Famous American Poet (1874-1963)

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"Poetry is an orphan of silence.
The words never quite equal the experience behind them."

Poetry Quotes by Charles Simic
American Poet born in 1938

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