Definition of Coleridge's poetry

A poem in the narrower sense is "that specie of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth, and from all other species it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from whole, as is compatible with the distinct gratification from it composed part".

A legitimated poem is one "the parts of which mutually support and explain each other": all in their proportions harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and the none influences of metrical arrangements.

A poem is always the work of a man employing the secondary imagination and so achieving the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discarded qualities (notion of organic unity) imagination and fancy: this distinction is tied to the nature of organic unity. Imagination is fitted to achieve the true unity of expression.

Fancy constructs surface decorations out of a new combinations of memories and perceptions.