Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"

"Kubla Khan" is one Taylor Coleridge's most well known poems. The story of how the poem came to be is also well know. Coleridge was inspired by a dream he was having in a drug induced state and was said to have thought out at least 200 to 300 lines of poetry that he started to write when he woke up . After completing three stanzas, he got an interruption from a mysterious person which caused him to forget the rest of his vision. He wrote one final stanza to complete the poem that we have today.
"Kubla Khan" is a poem filled with images of nature that according to Coleridge would be inside the "pleasure dome" that Kubla Khan had ordered to be built. The poet used a wide range of natural imagery that included rivers, the ocean, the sea, caverns, hills and caves . It is a very romanticized poem in that it focuses on natural thoughts and a individual's vision, which would be Coleridge's vision he had in his dream.
The pleasure dome can be interpreted to symbolize our imaginations where vivid and fantasy like thoughts can be created however we please. In lines 2 to 5, Coleridge shows how endless he believes the imagination can be when he says "A stately pleasure-dome decree:/Where Alph, the sacred river, ran/ Through caverns measureless to man/ Down to a sunless sea". This means that our imaginations are as long and wide as a river running into a never ending sea.
I believe the Coleridge was trying to show how multifaceted our imaginations can be through all of the natural images in the poem. Our imagination can consist of both lighter and happy thoughts or complex and heavier ones. In lines 8 to 11, Coleridge says, "And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills/ Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;/ And here were forests ancient as the hills,/ Enfolding sunny spots of greenery." This image of a blooming field is a lighter and happier thought which the poet had envisioned. Darker thoughts can also invade our imaginations which is shown in lines 12 to 17 :

But O, 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	15
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

On top of the hill, there was a bright and blooming field. Right below the hill, there is a woody covering that contains conflict and pain. In a way the field on the hill could symbolize a high point while the woody covering beneath could symbolize a low or conflicting point.