Poetry, n.
Etymology: [OF. poeterie. See Poet.]
1. The art of apprehending and interpreting ideas by the faculty of imagination; the art of idealizing in thought and in expression. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. Coleridge.
2. Imaginative language or composition, whether expressed rhythmically or in prose. Specifically: Metrical composition; verse; rhyme; poems collectively; as, heroic poetry; dramatic poetry; lyric or Pindaric poetry. "The planetlike music of poetry." Sir P. Sidney. She taketh most delight In music, instruments, and poetry. Shak.
Shades of meaning
Poetry is that form of literature that embodies beautiful thought, feeling, or action in melodious, rhythmical, and (usually) metrical language, in imaginative and artistic constructions. Poetry in a very wide sense may be anything that pleasingly addresses the imagination; as, the poetry of motion. In ordinary usage, poetry is both imaginative and metrical. There may be poetry without rime, but hardly without meter, or what in some languages takes its place, as the Hebrew parallelism; but poetry involves, besides the artistic form, the exercise of the fancy or imagination in a way always beautiful, often lofty or even sublime. Failing this, there may be verse, rime, and meter, but not poetry. There is much in literature that is beautiful and sublime in thought and artistic in construction, which is yet not poetry, because quite devoid of the element of song, whereby poetry differs from the most lofty, beautiful, or impassioned prose. Compare meter.