Kubla Khan

Summary

Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment is one of the most famous unfinished poems in English. Coleridge published it in 1816, at Lord Byron's urging, with Christabel, and he prefaced it with a prose note explaining its origin. In the summer of 1797, he says, he was living in a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Linton on the Exmoor coast. Unwell, he had taken an anodyne, a dose of opium, and fell asleep while reading a sentence in Samuel Purchas's travel book about the palace Kubla Khan commanded to be built. He claims that in a sleep of about three hours he composed two to three hundred lines without effort, and that on waking he began writing them down, but was called away by a person on business from Porlock; when he returned an hour later, the rest had vanished. The poem itself has three movements. First, Kubla Khan decrees a stately pleasure-dome in Xanadu, where the sacred river Alph runs through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea, amid gardens and ancient forests. Second, the poem turns to a deep romantic chasm, savage and holy, from which a mighty fountain bursts, flinging up the river, which meanders five miles and sinks in tumult to a lifeless ocean; amid the tumult Kubla hears ancestral voices prophesying war. Third, the speaker remembers a vision of an Abyssinian maid playing a dulcimer and singing of Mount Abora. If he could revive her song, he says, he would build that dome in air, and all who heard would cry Beware! of the inspired poet with flashing eyes and floating hair, who has fed on honey-dew and drunk the milk of Paradise. The poem is often read as a poem about poetic inspiration and its loss.

Plot or Argument

• Preface: the dream and the interruption

  Coleridge describes falling asleep after an anodyne, composing the poem in a dream, and losing most of it when a visitor from Porlock interrupted him.

• Lines 1-11: the pleasure-dome

  Kubla Khan's decree of a palace and walled gardens beside the sacred river Alph.

• Lines 12-36: the chasm and the fountain

  A savage, holy chasm, a bursting fountain, the river's fall to a lifeless ocean, and voices prophesying war.

• Lines 37-54: the damsel and the poet

  The speaker longs to revive the Abyssinian maid's song so that he could build the dome in air and be feared as an inspired poet.

Characters

• Kubla Khan, emperor

  The Mongol emperor of China who decrees the pleasure-dome.

• The Abyssinian maid, musician

  A damsel with a dulcimer seen in a vision.

• The speaker, poet

  Longs to recover her song and with it the power to create.

Lessons

• Inspiration and loss

  The preface and the last stanza both concern a vision that cannot be fully recovered. The poem is about the gap between imagination and making.

  • What does the speaker say he would do if he could revive the song?
  • How does the preface shape our reading?
  • Is the poem finished or unfinished?

• Pleasure and danger

  The pleasure-dome stands beside a savage chasm and voices prophesying war. Paradise and threat lie side by side.

  • What disturbs Kubla's paradise?
  • Why does the poem call the chasm holy and savage?
  • Compare the garden of Eden in Genesis 2-3.

• The poet as prophet

  The ending pictures the poet as a figure of awe and fear. Christians may ask what true inspiration is.

  • Why should hearers cry Beware?
  • What is honey-dew and the milk of Paradise?
  • How does Scripture describe true inspiration (2 Peter 1:21)?

Context

Coleridge, like many of his contemporaries, took laudanum (opium dissolved in alcohol) as medicine; he later became addicted. The poem's Kubla comes from Samuel Purchas's travel compilation Purchas his Pilgrimage (1613).

Composition

Probably composed in late 1797 (Coleridge dated it 1797; some scholars propose 1798); published in 1816 in Christabel; Kubla Khan; The Pains of Sleep. The text here is E. H. Coleridge's 1912 edition, with the 1816 preface.

Reception

First reviewers were puzzled; later readers made it a symbol of Romantic imagination, and the person from Porlock became a byword for interruption.

Comparisons

• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

  Coleridge's other supernatural masterpiece from the same months.

• Ode on a Grecian Urn

  Keats's poem on art, beauty and the limits of the imagination.

• Paradise Lost

  Milton's Eden, which Coleridge echoes in the gardens and the milk of Paradise.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The prose preface and its story of interruption.
• The three movements: dome, chasm, damsel.
• Sound patterns: alliteration and rhyme in lines 1-11.
• The shift from Kubla to I in the last stanza.
• The warning Beware! Beware!

Key terms and names

Xanadu

Shang-du, Kublai Khan's summer capital, known to Coleridge through Purchas.

Kubla Khan

Kublai Khan (1215-1294), Mongol emperor of China.

Anodyne

A pain-relieving medicine; here opium.

Dulcimer

A stringed instrument played with small hammers.

Fragment

An unfinished poem published as such, a favourite Romantic form.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension According to the preface, how was the poem composed and why is it unfinished?
2. Comprehension What does Kubla decree, and what surrounds it?
3. Interpretation What does the chasm add to the picture of the pleasure-dome?
4. Interpretation Why does the speaker want to revive the damsel's song?
5. Interpretation Why would hearers fear the poet?
6. Big Question Where does true creative inspiration come from?

Faith Connections

• Genesis 2:8-10 (Scripture)

  God plants a garden in Eden with a river that waters it; Kubla's man-made paradise echoes and rivals it.

• Ecclesiastes 2:4-11 (Scripture)

  The Preacher built houses, gardens and pools and found them vanity; compare Kubla's decree.

• 2 Peter 1:21 (Scripture)

  Prophecy came not by the will of man; a measure for the poem's claims about inspired vision.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The poet once saw a vision of a perfect, dangerous paradise and heard a heavenly song; if he could recover that song, he could make such a paradise in verse; but the vision is lost, and the poem remains a fragment about the power and frailty of imagination.

Rhetorical device: alliteration and assonance. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion imitates the winding river through repeated m sounds.

Debate: Resolved: that Kubla Khan is a complete poem despite Coleridge's claim that it is a fragment.

Memory Work

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree:

For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how the preface and the final stanza both describe the loss of a vision, and what the poem suggests about imagination.

Comparison with Ode on a Grecian Urn: Compare how Coleridge and Keats imagine a perfect world of art and what each says about its limits.

Medical Lens

Coleridge's prose preface attributes the poem to a dream after taking an anodyne (opium) for illness. It is a key text in the history of opium, dreams and creativity, though scholars doubt that the story is literally accurate. Coleridge's later addiction gives the preface added weight.

• Preface (1816)

  Coleridge describes taking an anodyne for a slight indisposition, falling asleep over Purchas, and composing in sleep.

  Opium Laudanum Dreams Nightmares
• Lines 42-54

  The longing to revive the visionary song and the trance-like image of the inspired poet.

  Altered States

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Sketch a map of Xanadu from lines 1-36, labelling the dome, gardens, chasm, fountain, river, caverns and sea.

• Essay

  Is the person from Porlock story true, and does it matter? Argue from the preface and the poem.

• Poetry

  Describe an imagined place in 12 lines using strong sound patterns, as Coleridge does.

Further Reading

• Purchas his Pilgrimage, Samuel Purchas

  Coleridge's source for Kubla.

• Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  His theory of imagination.

• The Road to Xanadu, John Livingston Lowes

  Classic study of the poem's sources (1927).