“KUBLA KHAN OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.
A FRAGMENT”
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1798)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
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 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 :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
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 honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Analysis
One of the best known poems in the English language, 'Kubla Khan' is also one of the most mysterious. In his prefatory note to the poem Coleridge explains he was suffering from an illness while staying in a farmhouse and had taken an 'anodyne' -- a medication that was likely to have been laudanum, an opiate to which Coleridge was to become addicted. Coleridge's preface explains that after taking this he fell into a deep sleep, and images drawn from a book he had been reading about Kubla Khan appeared to him in his sleep.
He claims that the words occurred to him simulataneously, and that when he woke up he began to transcribe them. He was interrrupted by a person on business and when he returned to write the rest of the words from the dream he was mortified to find that only fragmentary memories remained.
We do not have to believe all of Coleridge's explanation or simply explain the poem away as an hallucinogenic production. There is a rich critical heritage that attempts to explain the poem, but most critics agree that the poem is about creativity. The poet/Khan figure creates through language (degree), he is a mystical figure in the way poets liked to think of creative people (including themselves), and the poem reflects in its latter stages on the ephemerality of inspiration and the difficulty of recovering or communicating moments of inpiration.