One key characteristic of Romantic poetry is the celebration of the imagination. Romantic poetry also often describes the power of the natural world and celebrates the sensual as more vital than the rational. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" demonstrates all three of these characteristics.
The poem itself, or at least the images within it, came to Coleridge in a fevered dream under the influence of medicated opium. It is thus a product of his imagination in a heightened form. The "stately pleasure-dome" that Kubla Khan decrees is itself a symbol and manifestation of the power of imagination. The dome floats "midway on the waves" and is built "in air." It thus has no solid, tangible foundations, but rather, like the imagination, floats free of constraints.
Coleridge also writes in detail about the power of nature. In the second stanza he describes a "Mighty fountain" which, "with ceaseless turmoil seething," erupts from "that deep romantic chasm." Nature here, in the form of the fountain, is forceful and physically powerful. It shatters rocks so that fragments fall "Like rebounding hail." Often in Romantic poetry, nature is presented as powerful to emphasize, by contrast, the relative powerlessness of mankind.
In the last stanza especially, the speaker testifies to the power of the damsel's "symphony and song," which transports him to "such a deep delight." In fact, the damsel's song is so beautiful as to be synonymous with the aforementioned "sunny dome." The speaker says that he will "with music loud and long ... build that dome in air." This link between the song and the dome forges a link between the senses on one hand and the imagination on the other. The two are, indeed, inseparable and co-dependent. One's imagination is fuelled by one's senses, and one's senses are heightened by one's imagination.
"Kubla Khan" is a fine example of romantic poetry. It embodies all the various themes one associates with that literary movement. It is a work of heightened imagination; its vision is dreamy and radically subjective; its setting is exotic and strange, far removed from the rational, logical world of the European Enlightenment; and it shows a reverence and passion for the force of nature, a sublime power in its own right.
All of these elements are there right from the start. One doesn't have to look too hard to find them. In line 3, we're introduced to "Alph, the sacred river." A river is not just a body of water to a romantic like Coleridge; it is invested with almost supernatural properties. Nature is not something to be exploited by man; it is sacred and alive and must be treated with respect and awe.
Coleridge provides us with examples of great natural beauty:
"And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery."
But nature is much more than this for the romantics. It is also a place of darkness sublime and mystery unfathomable:
"But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced . . ."
I've highlighted some key words to illustrate the point. For the romantics, the enchanted world of nature can be dangerous and terrifying. Yet at the same time, it still retains for us a powerful, almost hypnotic attraction which incites us to explore its unfathomable depths while pushing back the boundaries of our own imaginations.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/kubla-khan
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