This is a rather interesting question to consider. I would
begin answering it by focusing on the intense way in which Coleridge presents us with a
poem that emerges from his imagination and feeling and intuition, qualities that were
prized by Romantics. The experience of writing poetry is paralleled by the creating of
the pleasure dome by Kubla Khan, and we are also presented with an incredible image of
the poet which presents him as an almost prophet-like figure who is separated from other
mere mortals and is in contact with the divine:
And all who heard should see them
there,
And all should cry, Beware!
Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating
hair!
Weave a circle round him
thrice,
And close your eyes with holy
dread,
For he on honeydew hath
fed,
And drunk the milk of
Paradise.
The act of
imaginative creation is one that the speaker of this poem longs to engage in, yet at the
same time he recognises that to do so would make him a figure that would be regarded by
awe and fear by those around him. Yet above all, this poem represents the triumph of the
imagination and the kind of creations it can achieve if it is given full expression.
Because of this, I would argue that this poem does reflect Coleridge's own idea of a
Romantic poem.
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