Kubla Khan is one of the best-known poems by the English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was written in 1797 or 1798 but not published until 1816. The poem is one of the finest examples of the Romantic movement in English literature. The Romantics valued emotion, sensation, the beauty of nature, and the power of the imagination. “Kubla Khan” is an experimental lyric, written in a dreamlike state, which expresses a fascination with Asia.
The poem’s subject, Kublai Khan, was the grandson of Genghis Khan and the founder of the Mongol, or Yuan, dynasty that ruled China from 1279 to 1368 (see Kublai Khan). His power and accomplishments are celebrated at length in The Travels of Marco Polo. In a short preface to Coleridge’s poem, the poet says he was reading about Polo’s travels when he fell asleep under the influence of an “anodyne” (opium, as he explained elsewhere). He then composed “two or three hundred lines” in his sleep without any “consciousness of effort.” Unfortunately, he adds, he was interrupted while writing down these lines, and he could never recollect the rest.
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 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 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 fountains 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 honeydew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
The first 11 lines put into verse a passage from Polo’s Travels, but the rest is Coleridge’s imaginative addition. The overall effect is dreamlike or visionary. The irregular verse form, with lines of variable length and no fixed rhyme scheme, gives the poem a feeling of spontaneity and freedom.
Coleridge’s Kubla initially seems to be a wondrous ruler. He simply issues a decree for a pleasure-dome, and the landscape appears to be transformed. But there is a sense of violation in his building a pleasure-dome on a sacred river. The poem emphasizes the majestic beauty of the landscape over the power to control it.
The speaker then dreams of constructing the marvelous dome differently. He begins, significantly, with “vision.” He would begin with “delight,” and the dome would appear in air. The themes of unreality, of building castles in the air, are obvious. But Coleridge is reminding us of the power of vision and language. Thus his poem highlights the contrast between worldly power and the power of imagination. It is better to have vision and no worldly power, he suggests, than the other way around.
For more information on Coleridge, see Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. See also English literature (Romantic poetry); Poetry (Kinds of poetry.
