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Kubla Khan
Kubla Khan: or A Vision in a Dream (/ˌkʊblə ˈkɑːn/) is a
Kubla Khan
poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797
or A Vision in a Dream
and published in 1816. It is sometimes given the subtitles "A
Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." According to by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge's preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed
one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream
after reading a work describing Shangdu, the summer capital
of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China founded by Kublai
Khan (Emperor Shizu of Yuan). Upon waking, he set about
writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until
he was interrupted by "a person on business from Porlock".
The poem could not be completed according to its original
200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the
lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for
his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it
was published.

The poem is vastly different in style from other poems written

by Coleridge. The first stanza of the poem describes Kublai Title page of Kubla Khan (1816)
Khan's pleasure dome built alongside a sacred river fed by a Written October 1797
powerful fountain. The second stanza of the poem is the Country United Kingdom
narrator's response to the power and effects of an Abyssinian
Language English
maid's song, which enraptures him but leaves him unable to
Form Fragment
act on her inspiration unless he could hear her once again.
Together, they form a comparison of creative power that does Meter Iambic tetrameter,
not work with nature and creative power that is harmonious iambic pentameter
with nature. The third and final stanza shifts to a first-person Rhyme abbaacc in some
perspective of the speaker detailing his sighting of a woman scheme parts, couplets in
playing a dulcimer, and if he could revive her song, he could others
fill the pleasure dome with music. He concludes by describing Publisher John Murray
a hypothetical audience's reaction to the song in the language
Publication 1816
of religious ecstasy.
date
Some of Coleridge's contemporaries denounced the poem and Lines 54
questioned his story of its origin. It was not until years later Full text
that critics began to openly admire the poem. Most modern
Kubla Khan at Wikisource
critics now view Kubla Khan as one of Coleridge's three great
poems, along with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. The poem is considered one of
the most famous examples of Romanticism in English poetry, and is one of the most frequently
anthologized poems in the English language.[1] The manuscript is a permanent exhibit at the
British Library in London.[2]

Poem
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The poem is divided into three irregular stanzas, which move loosely between different times and
places.

The first stanza begins with a fanciful description of the origin of Kublai Khan's capital Xanadu
(lines 1–2).[3] It is described as being near the river Alph, which passes through caves before
reaching a dark sea (lines 3–5). Ten miles of land were surrounded with fortified walls (lines 6–7),
encompassing lush gardens and forests (lines 8–11).

The second stanza describes a mysterious canyon (lines 12–16). A hydrothermal explosion erupted
from the canyon (lines 17–19), throwing rubble into the air (lines 20–23) and forming the source of
the sacred river Alph (line 24). The river wandered through the woods, then reached the caves and
dark sea described in the first stanza (lines 25–28). Kubla Khan, present for the eruption, heard a
prophecy of war (lines 29–30). An indented section presents an image of the pleasure-dome
reflected on the water, surrounded by the sound of the geyser above ground and the river
underground (lines 31–34). A final un-indented couplet describes the dome again (lines 35–36).

The third stanza shifts to the first-person perspective of the poem's speaker. He once saw a woman
in a vision playing a dulcimer (lines 37–41). If he could revive her song within himself, he says, he
would revive the pleasure dome itself with music (lines 42–47). Those who heard would also see
themselves there, and cry out a warning (lines 48–49). Their warning concerns an alarming male
figure (line 50). The stanza ends with instructions and a warning, to carry out a ritual because he
has consumed the food of Paradise (lines 51–54).

Composition and publication

Date of composition
Kubla Khan was likely written in October 1797, though the
precise date and circumstances of the first composition of
Kubla Khan are slightly ambiguous, due to limited direct
evidence. Coleridge usually dated his poems, but did not date
Kubla Khan,[4] and did not mention the poem directly in letters
to his friends.

Coleridge's descriptions of the poem's composition attribute it

to 1797. In a manuscript in Coleridge's handwriting (known as
the Crewe manuscript), a note by Coleridge says that it was
composed "in the fall of the year, 1797."[5][6] In the preface to
the first published edition of the poem, in 1816, Coleridge says
that it was composed during an extended stay he had made in
Somerset during "the summer of the year 1797."[7] On 14
October 1797, Coleridge wrote a letter to John Thelwall which,
Coleridge, 1814
although it does not directly mention Kubla Khan, expresses
many of the same feelings as in the poem,[note 1] suggesting that
these themes were on his mind.[9] All of these details have led to the consensus of an October 1797
composition date.

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A May 1798 composition date is sometimes proposed because the first written record of the poem
is in Dorothy Wordsworth's journal, October 1798. October 1799 has also been suggested because
by then Coleridge would have been able to read Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer, a work
which drew on the same sources as Kubla Khan. At both time periods, Coleridge was again in the
area of Ash Farm, near Culbone Church, where Coleridge consistently described composing the
poem. However, the October 1797 composition date is more widely accepted.

Composition in a dream
In September 1797, Coleridge lived in Nether Stowey in the southwest of England and spent much
of his time walking through the nearby Quantock Hills with his fellow poet William Wordsworth
and Wordsworth's sister Dorothy[10] (his route today is memorialised as the "Coleridge Way").[11]
Some time between 9 and 14 October 1797, when Coleridge says he had completed the tragedy
Osorio, he left Stowey for Lynton. On his return journey, he became sick and rested at Ash Farm,
located near Culbone Church and one of the few places to seek shelter on his route.[10] There, he
had a dream which inspired the poem.

Coleridge described the circumstances of his dream and the

poem in two places: on a manuscript copy written some time
before 1816, and in the preface to the printed version of the
poem published in 1816. The manuscript states: "This fragment
with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a sort of
Reverie brought on by two grains of Opium taken to check a
dysentry, at a Farm House between Porlock & Linton, a quarter
of a mile from Culbone Church." The printed preface describes
his location as "a lonely farm house between Porlock and
Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire,"
and embellishes the events into a narrative which has
sometimes been seen as part of the poem itself.

According to the extended preface narrative, Coleridge was

reading Purchas his Pilgrimes by Samuel Purchas, and fell
asleep after reading about Kublai Khan. Then, he says, he
"continued for about three hours in a profound sleep... during
which time he had the most vivid confidence, that he could not The Crewe manuscript, handwritten
have composed less than from two or three hundred lines ... On by Coleridge himself some time
Awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection before the poem was published in
of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and 1816
eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved." [12] The
passage continues with a famous account of an interruption:[13]
"At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock... and on
his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still
retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purpose of the vision, yet, with the
exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away."[12] The
"person on business from Porlock" later became a term to describe interrupted genius. When John
Livingston Lowes taught the poem, he told his students "If there is any man in the history of
literature who should be hanged, drawn, and quartered, it is the man on business from
Porlock."[14]

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There are some problems with Coleridge's account, especially the claim to have a copy of Purchas
with him. It was a rare book, unlikely to be at a "lonely farmhouse", nor would an individual carry
it on a journey; the folio was heavy and almost 1,000 pages in size.[15] It is possible that the words
of Purchas were merely remembered by Coleridge and that the depiction of immediately reading
the work before falling asleep was to suggest that the subject came to him accidentally.[16] Critics
have also noted that unlike the manuscript, which says he had taken two grains of opium, the
printed version of this story says only that "In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne
had been prescribed." The image of himself that Coleridge provides is of a dreamer who reads
works of lore and not as an opium addict. Instead, the effects of the opium, as described, are
intended to suggest that he was not used to its effects.[17]

According to some critics, the second stanza of the poem, forming a conclusion, was composed at a
later date and was possibly disconnected from the original dream.[18]

Publication
After its composition, Coleridge periodically read the poem to
friends, as to the Wordsworths in 1798, but did not seek to
publish it. In 1808 an anonymous contributor to the Monthly
Repertory of English Literature quoted two lines from it in a
book review.[19]

The poem was set aside until 1815 when Coleridge compiled
manuscripts of his poems for a collection titled Sibylline
Leaves.[20] It did not feature in that volume, but Coleridge did
read the poem to Lord Byron on 10 April 1816.[note 2]

Byron persuaded Coleridge to publish the poem, and on 12

April 1816, a contract was drawn up with the publisher John
Murray for £80.[22] The Preface of Kubla Khan explained that
it was printed "at the request of a poet of great and deserved
celebrity, and as far as the author's own opinions are Title page of Christabel, Kubla
concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the Khan, and the Pains of Sleep (1816)
ground of any supposed poetic merits." [23] Coleridge's wife
discouraged the publication, [note 3] and Charles Lamb, a poet
and friend of Coleridge, expressed mixed feelings, worrying that the printed version of the poem
couldn't capture the power of the recited version.[note 4]

Kubla Khan was published with Christabel and "The Pains of Sleep" on 25 May 1816.[26] Coleridge
included the subtitle "A Fragment" to defend against criticism of the poem's incomplete nature.[27]
The original published version of the work was separated into 2 stanzas, with the first ending at
line 30.[28] The poem was printed four times in Coleridge's life, with the final printing in his
Poetical Works of 1834.[29] In the final work, Coleridge added the expanded subtitle "Or, A Vision
in a Dream. A Fragment". Printed with Kubla Khan was a preface that claimed a dream provided

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Coleridge the lines.[30]

In some later anthologies of Coleridge's poetry, the preface is dropped
along with the subtitle denoting its fragmentary and dream nature. Sometimes, the preface is
included in modern editions but lacks both the first and final paragraphs.[31]

Sources

Purchas and Marco Polo

The book Coleridge was reading before he fell asleep was
Purchas, his Pilgrimes, or Relations of the World and
Religions Observed in All Ages and Places Discovered, from
the Creation to the Present, by the English clergyman and
geographer Samuel Purchas, published in 1613. The book
contained a brief description of Xanadu, the summer capital of
the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan. Coleridge's preface says that

he was reading the following sentence, or words of Xanadu (here called Ciandu, as
the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage: "Here Marco Polo called it) on the French
the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, map of Asia made by Sanson
and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles d'Abbeville, geographer of King
Louis XIV, dated 1650. It was
of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall."
northeast of Cambalu, or modern-
day Beijing.
Coleridge names the wrong book by Purchas (Purchas wrote
three books, his Pilgrimage, his Pilgrim, and his Pilgrimes; the
last was his collection of travel stories), and misquotes the line. The text about Xanadu in Purchas,
His Pilgrimes, which Coleridge admitted he did not remember exactly, was:

In Xandu did Cublai Can build a stately Pallace, encompassing sixteen miles of plaine
ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull
streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a
sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be moved from place to place.[32]

This quotation was based upon the writings of the Venetian explorer Marco Polo who is widely
believed to have visited Xanadu in about 1275.[note 5] Marco Polo also described a large portable
palace made of gilded and lacquered cane or bamboo which could be taken apart quickly and
moved from place to place.[note 6] This was the "sumptuous house of pleasure" mentioned by
Purchas, which Coleridge transformed into a "stately pleasure dome".

In terms of spelling, Coleridge's printed version differs from Purchas's spelling, which refers to the
Tartar ruler as "Cublai Can", and from the spelling used by Milton, "Cathaian Can".[35] His original
manuscript spells the name "Cubla Khan" and the place "Xannadu".

Mount Abora
In the Crewe manuscript (the earlier unpublished version of the poem), the Abyssinian maid is
singing of Mount Amara, rather than Abora. Mount Amara is a real mountain, today called Amba
Geshen, located in the Amhara Region of modern Ethiopia, formerly known as the Abyssinian

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Empire. It was a natural fortress, and was the site of the royal
treasury and the royal prison. The sons of the Emperors of
Abyssinia, except for the heir, were held prisoner there, to
prevent them from staging a coup against their father, until the
Emperor's death.

Mount Amara was visited between 1515 and 1521 by Portuguese

priest, explorer and diplomat Francisco Alvares (1465–1541), Debre Damo, an amba (flat-topped
who was on a mission to meet the Christian king of Ethiopia. mountain) in Ethiopia similar to
His description of Mount Amara was published in 1540, and Amba Geshen (Mount Amara)
appears in Purchas, his Pilgrimes, the book Coleridge was
reading before he wrote "Kubla Khan".[note 7] Mount Amara
also appears in Milton's Paradise Lost, where it is "by some suppos'd / True Paradise under the
Ethiop line,"[37] where Abyssinian kings keep their children guarded.[38]

Mount Amara is in the same region as Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile river. Ethiopian
tradition says that the Blue Nile is the River Gihon of the Bible, one of the four rivers that flow out
of the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis, which says that Gihon flows through the Kingdom of
Kush, the Biblical name for Ethiopia and Sudan. In fact the Blue Nile is very far from the other
three rivers mentioned in Genesis 2:10–14, but this belief led to the connection in 18th and 19th
century English literature between Mount Amara and Paradise.[39]

Abyssinian maid
The Abyssinian maid is similar to the way Coleridge describes Lewti in another poem he wrote
around the same time, Lewti. The connection between Lewti and the Abyssinian maid makes it
possible that the maid was intended as a disguised version of Mary Evans, who appears as a love
interest since Coleridge's 1794 poem The Sigh. Evans, in these poems, appears as an object of
sexual desire and a source of inspiration.[40] She is also similar to the later subject of many of
Coleridge's poems, Asra, based on Sara Hutchinson.[41]

Literary precedents for the Abyssinian maid include a description in Heliodorus's work Aethiopian
History, with its description of "a young Lady, sitting upon a Rock, of so rare and perfect a Beauty,
as one would have taken her for a Goddess, and though her present misery opprest her with
extreamest grief, yet in the greatness of her afflection, they might easily perceive the greatness of
her Courage: A Laurel crown'd her Head, and a Quiver in a Scarf hanged at her back".[42] Her
description in the poem is also related to Isis of Apuleius's Metamorphoses, and to John Keats's
Indian woman in Endymion who is revealed to be the moon goddess.[43]

Other sources
Charles Lamb provided Coleridge on 15 April 1797 with a copy of his "A Vision of Repentance", a
poem that discussed a dream containing imagery similar to those in "Kubla Khan". The poem could
have provided Coleridge with the idea of a dream poem that discusses fountains, sacredness, and
even a woman singing a sorrowful song.[44]

There are additional strong literary connections to other works, including John Milton's Paradise
Lost, Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, Chatterton's African Eclogues, William Bartram's Travels
through North and South Carolina,[45][note 8] Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth, Mary
Wollstonecraft's A Short Residence in Sweden, Plato's Phaedrus and Ion,[47] Maurice's The
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History of Hindostan, and Heliodorus's Aethiopian History.[48] The poem also contains allusions
to the Book of Revelation in its description of New Jerusalem and to the paradise of William
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.[49] The sources used for "Kubla Khan" are also used
in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.[50]

Opium itself has also been seen as a "source" for many of the poem's features, such as its
disorganized action. These features are similar to writing by other contemporary opium eaters and
writers, such as Thomas de Quincey and Charles Pierre Baudelaire.

Coleridge may also have been influenced by the surrounding of Culbone Combe and its hills,
gulleys, and other features including the "mystical" and "sacred" locations in the region. Other
geographic influences include the river, which has been tied to Alpheus in Greece and is similar to
the Nile. The caves have been compared to those in Kashmir.

Style

Kubla Khan
Fragmentation
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
According to Coleridge's account, the A stately pleasure-dome decree:
poem is an incomplete fragment.[52] Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Originally, he says, his dream included Through caverns measureless to man
between 200 and 300 lines, but he was Down to a sunless sea.
able to compose only the first 30 So twice five miles of fertile ground
before he was interrupted. The second With walls and towers were girdled round;
stanza is not necessarily part of the And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
original dream and refers to the dream Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;
in the past tense.[53] Kubla Khan is And here were forests ancient as the hills,
also related to the genre of Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
fragmentary poetry, with internal
images reinforcing the idea of But oh that deep romantic chasm which slanted
fragmentation that is found within the Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
form of the poem.[54] The poem's self- A savage place! as holy and inchanted
proclaimed fragmentary nature As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
combined with Coleridge's warning By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
about the poem in the preface turns And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
"Kubla Khan" into an "anti-poem", a As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
work that lacks structure, order, and A mighty fountain momently was forced:
leaves the reader confused instead of Amid whose swift half-intermitted Burst
enlightened.[55] However, the poem Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
has little relation to the other Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
fragmentary poems Coleridge And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
wrote.[56]
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
The first lines of the poem follow
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
iambic tetrameter with the initial
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
stanza relying on heavy stresses. The
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
lines of the second stanza incorporate
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
lighter stresses to increase the speed of
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
the meter to separate them from the
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hammer-like rhythm of the previous

lines.[57] There also is a strong break The shadow of the dome of pleasure
following line 36 in the poem that Floated midway on the waves;
provides for a second stanza, and there Where was heard the mingled measure
is a transition in narration from a third From the fountain and the caves.
person narration about Kubla Khan It was a miracle of rare device,
into the poet discussing his role as a A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
poet.[58] Without the Preface, the two
stanzas form two different poems that A damsel with a dulcimer
have some relationship to each other In a vision once I saw:
but lack unity.[59] This is not to say It was an Abyssinian maid
they would be two different poems, And on her dulcimer she play'd,
since the technique of having separate Singing of Mount Abora.
parts that respond to another is used in Could I revive within me
the genre of the odal hymn, as in the Her symphony and song,
poetry of other Romantic poets To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
including John Keats or Percy Bysshe That with music loud and long,
Shelley.[60] However, the odal hymn as I would build that dome in air,
used by others has a stronger unity That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
among its parts, and Coleridge And all who heard should see them there,
believed in writing poetry that was And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
unified organically.[61] It is possible His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
that Coleridge was displeased by the Weave a circle round him thrice,
lack of unity in the poem and added a And close your eyes with holy dread:
note about the structure to the Preface For he on honey-dew hath fed,
to explain his thoughts.[62] And drank the milk of Paradise.[51]

Sound
The poem's language is highly stylised with a strong emphasis on sound devices that change
between the poem's original two stanzas. The poem relies on many sound-based techniques,
including cognate variation and chiasmus.[63] In particular, the poem emphasises the use of the
"æ" sound and similar modifications to the standard "a" sound to make the poem sound Asian. Its
rhyme scheme found in the first seven lines is repeated in the first seven lines of the second stanza.
There is a heavy use of assonance and alliteration, especially in the first line: "In Xanadu did Kubla
Khan". The stressed sounds, "Xan", "du", "Ku", "Khan", contain assonance in their use of the
sounds a-u-u-a, have two rhyming syllables with "Xan" and "Khan", and employ alliteration with
the name "Kubla Khan" and the reuse of "d" sounds in "Xanadu" and "did". To pull the line
together, the "i" sound of "In" is repeated in "did". Later lines do not contain the same amount of
symmetry but do rely on assonance and rhymes throughout. Though the lines are interconnected,
the rhyme scheme and line lengths are irregular.[64]

Major themes

Poetic imagination

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One theory says that "Kubla Khan" is about poetry and the two sections discuss two types of
poems.[65] The power of the imagination is an important component to this theme. The poem
celebrates creativity and how the poet is able to experience a connection to the universe through
inspiration. As a poet, Coleridge places himself in an uncertain position as either master over his
creative powers or a slave to it.[66] The dome city represents the imagination and the second stanza
represents the relationship between a poet and the rest of society. The poet is separated from the
rest of humanity after he is exposed to the power to create and is able to witness visions of truth.
This separation causes a combative relationship between the poet and the audience as the poet
seeks to control his listener through a mesmerising technique.[67] The poem's emphasis on
imagination as subject of a poem, on the contrasts within the paradisal setting, and its discussion
of the role of poet as either being blessed or cursed by imagination, has influenced many works,
including Alfred Tennyson's "Palace of Art" and William Butler Yeats's Byzantium based
poems.[68] There is also a strong connection between the idea of retreating into the imagination
found within Keats's Lamia and in Tennyson's "Palace of Art".[69] The Preface, when added to the
poem, connects the idea of the paradise as the imagination with the land of Porlock, and that the
imagination, though infinite, would be interrupted by a "person on business". The Preface then
allows for Coleridge to leave the poem as a fragment, which represents the inability for the
imagination to provide complete images or truly reflect reality. The poem would not be about the
act of creation but a fragmentary view revealing how the act works: how the poet crafts language
and how it relates to himself.[70]

Through use of the imagination, the poem is able to discuss issues surrounding tyranny, war, and
contrasts that exist within paradise.[71] Part of the war motif could be a metaphor for the poet in a
competitive struggle with the reader to push his own vision and ideas upon his audience.[72] As a
component to the idea of imagination in the poem is the creative process by describing a world that
is of the imagination and another that is of understanding. The poet, in Coleridge's system, is able
to move from the world of understanding, where men normally are, and enter into the world of the
imagination through poetry. When the narrator describes the "ancestral voices prophesying war",
the idea is part of the world of understanding, or the real world. As a whole, the poem is connected
to Coleridge's belief in a secondary Imagination that can lead a poet into a world of imagination,
and the poem is both a description of that world and a description of how the poet enters the
world.[73] The imagination, as it appears in many of Coleridge's and Wordsworth's works,
including "Kubla Khan", is discussed through the metaphor of water, and the use of the river in
"Kubla Khan" is connected to the use of the stream in Wordsworth's The Prelude. The water
imagery is also related to the divine and nature, and the poet is able to tap into nature in a way
Kubla Khan cannot to harness its power.[74]

The nature of paradise

Although the land is one of man-made "pleasure", there is a natural, "sacred" river that runs past
it. The lines describing the river have a markedly different rhythm from the rest of the passage.[57]
The land is constructed as a garden, but like Eden after Man's fall, Xanadu is isolated by walls. The
finite properties of the constructed walls of Xanadu are contrasted with the infinite properties of
the natural caves through which the river runs. The poem expands on the gothic hints of the first
stanza as the narrator explores the dark chasm in the midst of Xanadu's gardens, and describes the
surrounding area as both "savage" and "holy". Yarlott interprets this chasm as symbolic of the poet
struggling with decadence that ignores nature.[75] It may also represent the dark side of the soul,
the dehumanising effect of power and dominion. Fountains are often symbolic of the inception of
life, and in this case may represent forceful creativity.[76] Since this fountain ends in death, it may
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also simply represent the life span of a human, from violent birth to a sinking end. Yarlott argues
that the war represents the penalty for seeking pleasure, or simply the confrontation of the present
by the past.[77] Though the exterior of Xanadu is presented in images of darkness, and in context of
the dead sea, we are reminded of the "miracle" and "pleasure" of Kubla Khan's creation. The vision
of the sites, including the dome, the cavern, and the fountain, are similar to an apocalyptic vision.
Together, the natural and man-made structures form a miracle of nature as they represent the
mixing of opposites together, the essence of creativity.[78] In the third stanza, the narrator turns
prophetic, referring to a vision of an unidentified "Abyssinian maid" who sings of "Mount Abora".
Harold Bloom suggests that this passage reveals the narrator's desire to rival Khan's ability to
create with his own.[79] The woman may also refer to Mnemosyne, the Greek personification of
memory and mother of the muses, referring directly to Coleridge's claimed struggle to compose
this poem from memory of a dream. The subsequent passage refers to unnamed witnesses who
may also hear this, and thereby share in the narrator's vision of a replicated, ethereal, Xanadu.
Harold Bloom suggests that the power of the poetic imagination, stronger than nature or art, fills
the narrator and grants him the ability to share this vision with others through his poetry. The
narrator would thereby be elevated to an awesome, almost mythical status, as one who has
experienced an Edenic paradise available only to those who have similarly mastered these creative
powers.[80]

In the tradition from which Coleridge drew, the Tatars ruled by Kubla Khan were depicted as
uncivilized worshippers of the sun, connected to either the Cain or Ham line of outcasts. In the
tradition Coleridge relies on, the Tatar worship the sun because it reminds them of paradise, and
they build gardens because they want to recreate paradise.[81] The Tatars are connected to the
Judaeo Christian ideas of Original Sin and Eden: Kubla Khan is of the line of Cain and fallen, but
he wants to overcome that state and rediscover paradise by creating an enclosed garden.[82] The
place was described in negative terms and seen as an inferior representation of paradise, and
Coleridge's ethical system did not connect pleasure with joy or the divine.[83] However, Coleridge
describes Khan in a peaceful light and as a man of genius. He seeks to show his might but does so
by building his own version of paradise. The description and the tradition provide a contrast
between the daemonic and genius within the poem, and Khan is a ruler who is unable to recreate
Eden.[84]

The dome, as described in The History of Hindostan, was related to nature worship as it reflects
the shape of the universe. Coleridge believed in a connection between nature and the divine but
believed that the only dome that should serve as the top of a temple was the sky. He thought that a
dome was an attempt to hide from the ideal and escape into a private creation, and Kubla Khan's
dome is a flaw that keeps him from truly connecting to nature.[85] Purchas's work does not
mention a dome but a "house of pleasure". The use of dome instead of house or palace could
represent the most artificial of constructs and reinforce the idea that the builder was separated
from nature. However, Coleridge did believe that a dome could be positive if it was connected to
religion, but the Khan's dome was one of immoral pleasure and a purposeless life dominated by
sensuality and pleasure.[86]

Critical response
The reception of Kubla Khan has changed substantially over time. Initial reactions to the poem
were lukewarm, despite praise from notable figures like Lord Byron and Walter Scott. The work
went through multiple editions, but the poem, as with his others published in 1816 and 1817, had
poor sales. Initial reviewers saw some aesthetic appeal in the poem, but considered it

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unremarkable overall. As critics began to consider Coleridge's

body of work as whole, however, Kubla Khan was increasingly
singled out for praise. Positive evaluation of the poem in the
19th and early 20th centuries treated it as a purely aesthetic
object, to be appreciated for its evocative sensory
experience.[87] Later criticism continued to appreciate the
poem, but no longer considered it as transcending concrete
meaning, instead interpreting it as a complex statement on
poetry itself and the nature of individual genius.[87]

During Coleridge's
lifetime
Literary reviews at the time
of the collection's first Lord Byron, second-generation
publication generally Romantic poet who encouraged
dismissed it.[88] At the time Coleridge's publication of Kubla
Khan, by Richard Westall
of the poem's publication, a
new generation of critical
magazines, including Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine,
Edinburgh Review, and Quarterly Review, had been
established, with critics who were more provocative than those
of the previous generation. These critics were hostile to
Coleridge due to a difference of political views, and due to a
Self-portrait of William Hazlitt, puff piece written by Byron about the Christabel
Romantic critic who wrote the first
publication.[89] The first of the negative reviews was written by
negative review of Kubla Khan
William Hazlitt, literary critic and Romantic writer, who
criticized the fragmentary nature of the work. Hazlitt said that
the poem "comes to no conclusion" and that "from an excess of capacity, [Coleridge] does little or
nothing" with his material.[90] The only positive quality which Hazlitt notes is a certain aesthetic
appeal: he says "we could repeat these lines to ourselves not the less often for not knowing the
meaning of them," revealing that "Mr Coleridge can write better nonsense verse than any man in
English."[90] As other reviews continued to be published in 1816, they, too, were lukewarm at best.
The poem received limited praise for "some playful thoughts and fanciful imagery,"[91] and was
said to "have much of the Oriental richness and harmony"[92] but was generally considered
unremarkable.[93]

These early reviews generally accepted Coleridge's story of composing the poem in a dream, but
dismissed its relevance, and observed that many others have had similar experiences.[93][94][95]
More than one review suggested that the dream had not merited publication.[92][95] One reviewer
questioned whether Coleridge had really dreamed his composition, suggesting that instead he
likely wrote it rapidly upon waking.[96]

More positive appraisals of the poem began to emerge when Coleridge's contemporaries evaluated
his body of work overall. In October 1821, Leigh Hunt singled out Kubla Khan as one of Coleridge's
best works, praising the poem's evocative, dreamlike beauty.[97] An 1830 review of Coleridge's
Poetical Works similarly praised for its "melodious versification," describing it as "perfect music."

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An 1834 review, published shortly after Coleridge's death, also

praised Kubla Khan's musicality. These three later assessments
of Kubla Khan responded more positively to Coleridge's
description of composing the poem in a dream, as an additional
facet of the poetry.[97]

Victorian period
Victorian critics praised the poem and some examined aspects
of the poem's background. John Sheppard, in his analysis of
dreams titled On Dreams (1847), lamented Coleridge's drug
use as getting in the way of his poetry but argued: "It is
probable, since he writes of having taken an 'anodyne,' that the
'vision in a dream' arose under some excitement of that same
Leigh Hunt, second-generation
narcotic; but this does not destroy, even as to his particular
Romantic poet who praised Kubla
case, the evidence for a wonderfully inventive action of the Khan
mind in sleep; for, whatever were the exciting cause, the fact
remains the same".[98] Hall Caine, in his 1883 survey of the
original critical response to Christabel and "Kubla Khan", praised the poem and declared: "It must
surely be allowed that the adverse criticism on 'Christabel' and 'Kubla Khan' which is here quoted
is outside all tolerant treatment, whether of raillery or of banter. It is difficult to attribute such false
verdict to pure and absolute ignorance. Even when we make all due allowance for the prejudices of
critics whose only possible enthusiasm went out to 'the pointed and fine propriety of Poe,' we can
hardly believe that the exquisite art which is among the most valued on our possessions could
encounter so much garrulous abuse without the criminal intervention of personal malignancy."[99]
In a review of H. D. Traill's analysis of Coleridge in the "English Men of Letters", an anonymous
reviewer wrote in 1885 Westminster Review: "Of 'Kubla Khan,' Mr. Traill writes: 'As to the wild
dream-poem 'Kubla Khan,' it is hardly more than a psychological curiosity, and only that perhaps
in respect of the completeness of its metrical form.' Lovers of poetry think otherwise, and listen to
these wonderful lines as the voice of Poesy itself."[100]

Critics at the end of the 19th century favoured the poem and placed it as one of Coleridge's best
works. When discussing Christabel, Rime of the Ancient Mariner and "Kubla Khan", an
anonymous reviewer in the October 1893 The Church Quarterly Review claimed, "In these poems
Coleridge achieves a mastery of language and rhythm which is nowhere else conspicuously evident
in him."[101] In 1895, Andrew Lang reviewed the Letters of Coleridge in addition to Coleridge's
"Kubla Khan", Christabel and Rime of the Ancient Mariner, saying: "all these poems are
'miraculous;' all seem to have been 'given' by the dreaming 'subconscious self' of Coleridge. The
earliest pieces hold no promise of these marvels. They come from what is oldest in Coleridge's
nature, his uninvited and irrepressible intuition, magical and rare, vivid beyond common sight of
common things, sweet beyond sound of things heard."[102] G E Woodberry, in 1897, said that
Christabel, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and "Kubla Khan" "are the marvelous creations of his
genius. In these it will be said there is both a world of nature new created, and a dramatic method
and interest. It is enough for the purpose of the analysis if it be granted that nowhere else in
Coleridge's work, except in these and less noticeably in a few other instances, do these high
characteristics occur."[103] In speaking of the three poems, he claimed they "have besides that
wealth of beauty in detail, of fine diction, of liquid melody, of sentiment, thought, and image,

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which belong only to poetry of the highest order, and which are too obvious to require any
comment. 'Kubla Khan' is a poem of the same kind, in which the mystical effect is given almost
wholly by landscape."[104]

1920s–30s
The 1920s contained analysis of the poem that emphasised the poem's power. In Road to Xanadu
(1927), a book length study of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and "Kubla Khan", John
Livingston Lowes claimed that the poems were "two of the most remarkable poems in
English".[105] When turning to the background of the works, he argued, "Coleridge as Coleridge, be
it said at once, is a secondary moment to our purpose; it is the significant process, not the man,
which constitutes our theme. But the amazing modus operandi of his genius, in the fresh light
which I hope I have to offer, becomes the very abstract and brief chronicle of the procedure of the
creative faculty itself."[106] After breaking down the various aspects of the poem, Lowes stated,
"with a picture of unimpaired and thrilling vividness, the fragment ends. And with it ends, for all
save Coleridge, the dream. 'The earth hath bubbles as the water has, and this is of them.' For 'Kubla
Khan' is as near enchantment, I suppose, as we are like to come in this dull world. And over it is
cast the glamour, enhanced beyond all reckoning in the dream, of the remote in time and space –
that visionary presence of a vague and gorgeous and mysterious Past which brooded, as Coleridge
read, above the inscrutable Nile, and domed pavilions in Cashmere, and the vanished stateliness of
Xanadu."[107] He continued by describing the power of the poem: "For none of the things which we
have seen – dome, river, chasm, fountain, caves of ice, or floating hair – nor any combination of
them holds the secret key to that sense of an incommunicable witchery which pervades the poem.
That is something more impalpable by far, into which entered who can tell what traceless, shadowy
recollections...The poem is steeped in the wonder of all Coleridge's enchanted voyagings."[108]
Lowes then concluded about the two works: "Not even in the magical four and fifty lines of 'Kubla
Khan' is sheer visualizing energy so intensely exercised as in 'The Ancient Mariner.' But every
crystal-clear picture there, is an integral part of a preconceived and consciously elaborated
whole...In 'Kubla Khan' the linked and interweaving images irresponsibly and gloriously stream,
like the pulsing, fluctuating banners of the North. And their pageant is as aimless as it is
magnificent...There is, then...one glory of 'Kubla Khan' and another glory of 'The Ancient Mariner,'
as one star differeth from another star in glory."[109] George Watson, in 1966, claimed that Lowes's
analysis of the poems "will stand as a permanent monument to historical criticism."[110] Also in
1966, Kenneth Burke, declared, "Count me among those who would view this poem both as a
marvel, and as 'in principle' finished."[111]

T. S. Eliot attacked the reputation of "Kubla Khan" and sparked a dispute within literary criticism
with his analysis of the poem in his essay "Origin and Uses of Poetry" from The Use of Poetry and
the Use of Criticism (1933): "The way in which poetry is written is not, so far as our knowledge of
these obscure matters as yet extends, any clue to its value...The faith in mystical inspiration is
responsible for the exaggerated repute of 'Kubla Khan'. The imagery of that fragment, certainly,
whatever its origins in Coleridge's reading, sank to the depths of Coleridge's feeling, was saturated,
transformed there...and brought up into daylight again."[112] He goes on to explain, "But it is not
used: the poem has not been written. A single verse is not poetry unless it is a one-verse poem; and
even the finest line draws its life from its context. Organization is necessary as well as 'inspiration'.
The re-creation of word and image which happens fitfully in the poetry of such a poet as Coleridge
happens almost incessantly with Shakespeare."[112] Geoffrey Yarlott, in 1967, responds to Eliot to
claim, "Certainly, the enigmatic personages who appear in the poem...and the vaguely incantatory
proper names...appear to adumbrate rather than crystalize the poet's intention. Yet, though
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generally speaking intentions in poetry are nothing save as

'realized', we are unable to ignore the poem, despite Mr Eliot's
strictures on its 'exaggerated repute'."[113] He continued, "We
may question without end what it means, but few of us
question if the poem is worth the trouble, or whether the
meaning is worth the having. While the feeling persists that
there is something there which is profoundly important, the
challenge to elucidate it proves irresistible."[113] However,
Lilian Furst, in 1969, countered Yarlott to argue that, "T. S.
Eliot's objection to the exaggerated repute of the surrealist
"Kubla Khan" is not unjustified. Moreover, the customary
criticism of Coleridge as a cerebral poet would seem to be
borne out by those poems such as This Lime-tree Bower my
Prison or The Pains of Sleep, which tend more towards a direct T. S. Eliot, poet and literary critic
statement than an imaginative presentation of personal
dilemma."[114]

1940s–60s
During the 1940s and 1950s, critics focused on the technique of the poem and how it relates to the
meaning. In 1941, G. W. Knight claimed that "Kubla Khan" "needs no defence. It has a barbaric and
oriental magnificence that asserts itself with a happy power and authenticity too often absent from
visionary poems set within the Christian tradition."[115] Humphrey House, in 1953, praised the
poem and said of beginning of the poem: "The whole passage is full of life because the verse has
both the needed energy and the needed control. The combination of energy and control in the
rhythm and sound is so great" and that Coleridge's words "convey so fully the sense of
inexhaustible energy, now falling now rising, but persisting through its own pulse".[116] Also in
1953, Elisabeth Schneider dedicated her book to analysing the various aspects of the poem,
including the various sound techniques. When discussing the quality of the poem, she wrote, "I
sometimes think we overwork Coleridge's idea of 'the balance or reconciliation of opposite or
discordant qualities.' I have to come back to it here, however, for the particular flavor of "Kubla
Khan", with its air of mystery, is describable in part through that convenient phrase. Yet, the
'reconciliation' does not quite occur either. It is in fact avoided. What we have instead is the very
spirit of 'oscillation' itself."[117] Continuing, she claimed, "The poem is the soul of ambivalence,
oscillation's very self; and that is probably its deepest meaning. In creating this effect, form and
matter are intricately woven. The irregular and inexact rhymes and varied lengths of the lines play
some part. More important is the musical effect in which a smooth, rather swift forward movement
is emphasized by the relation of grammatical structure to line and rhyme, yet is impeded and
thrown back upon itself even from the beginning".[117] She then concluded: "Here in these
interwoven oscillations dwells the magic, the 'dream,' and the air of mysterious meaning of "Kubla
Khan". I question whether this effect was all deliberately through [sic?] out by Coleridge, though it
might have been. It is possibly half-inherent in his subject...What remains is the spirit of
'oscillation,' perfectly poeticized, and possibly ironically commemorative of the author."[118]
Following in 1959, John Beer described the complex nature of the poem: "'Kubla Khan' the poem is
not a meaningless reverie, but a poem so packed with meaning as to render detailed elucidation
extremely difficult."[119] In responding to House, Beer claimed, "That there is an image of energy in
the fountain may be accepted: but I cannot agree that it is creative energy of the highest type."[120]

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Critics of the 1960s focused on the reputation of the poem and how it compared to Coleridge's
other poems. In 1966, Virginia Radley considered Wordsworth and his sister as an important
influence to Coleridge writing a great poem: "Almost daily social intercourse with this remarkable
brother and sister seemed to provide the catalyst to greatness, for it is during this period that
Coleridge conceived his greatest poems, 'Christabel,' 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' and 'Kubla
Khan,' poems so distinctive and so different from his others that many generations of readers know
Coleridge solely through them."[121] She latter added that "Of all the poems Coleridge wrote, three
are beyond compare. These three, 'The Ancient Mariner,' 'Christabel,' and 'Kubla Khan,' produced
an aura which defies definition, but which might be properly be called one of 'natural magic.'"[122]
What sets apart the poem from the others is its "verbal enactment of the creative process" which
makes it "unique even among the three poems of high imagination."[123] To Radley, "the poem is
skilfully wrought, as are all the poems of high imagination. The opposites within it are diverse and
effectively so. In tone, the poem juxtaposes quiet with noise...Action presents its contrasts
also...These seemingly antithetical images combine to demonstrate the proximity of the known and
the unknown worlds, the two worlds of Understanding and Imagination."[124] In concluding about
the poem, she argued, "In truth, there are other 'Fears in Solitude' than that written by Coleridge
and there are other 'Frosts at Midnight'; but there are no other 'Ancient Mariners' or 'Kubla
Khans,' nor are there likely to be. In evaluating Coleridge's poetry, it can readily be seen and
accepted that for the poems of high imagination his reputation is eternally made."[125]

In the same year as Radley, George Watson argued that "The case of 'Kubla Khan' is perhaps the
strangest of all – a poem that stands high even in English poetry as a work of ordered perfection is
offered by the poet himself, nearly twenty years after its composition, as a fragment. Anyone can
accept that a writer's head should be full of projects he will never fulfil, and most writers are
cautious enough not to set them down; Coleridge, rashly, did set them down, so that his very
fertility has survived as evidence of infertility."[126] He later argued that the poem "is probably the
most original poem about poetry in English, and the first hint outside his notebooks and letters
that a major critic lies hidden in the twenty-five-year-old Coleridge."[127] In conclusion about the
poem, Watson stated, "The triumph of 'Kubla Khan,' perhaps, lies in its evasions: it hints so
delicately at critical truths while demonstrating them so boldly. The contrasts between the two
halves of the poem...So bold, indeed, that Coleridge for once was able to dispense with any
language out of the past. It was his own poem, a manifesto. To read it now, with the hindsight of
another age, is to feel premonitions of the critical achievement to come...But the poem is in
advance, not just of these, but in all probability of any critical statement that survives. It may be
that it stands close to the moment of discovery itself."[128] After responding to Eliot's claims about
"Kubla Khan", Yarlott, in 1967, argued that "few of us question if the poem is worth the trouble"
before explaining that "The ambiguities inherent in the poem pose a special problem of critical
approach. If we restrict ourselves to what is 'given', appealing to the poem as a 'whole', we shall fail
probably to resolves its various cruxes. Hence, there is a temptation to look for 'external' influences
... The trouble with all these approaches is that they tend finally to lead away from the poem
itself."[129] When describing specifics, he argued, "The rhythmical development of the stanza, too,
though technically brilliant, evokes admiration rather than delight. The unusually heavy stresses
and abrupt masculine rhymes impose a slow and sonorous weightiness upon the movement of the
iambic octosyllabics which is quite in contrast, say, to the light fast metre of the final stanza where
speed of movement matches buoyancy of tone."[57] Following in 1968, Walter Jackson Bate called
the poem "haunting" and said that it was "so unlike anything else in English".[130]

1970s–present
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Criticism during the 1970s and 1980s emphasised the importance of the Preface while praising the
work. Norman Fruman, in 1971, argued: "To discuss 'Kubla Khan' as one might any other great
poem would be an exercise in futility. For a century and a half its status has been unique, a
masterpiece sui generis, embodying interpretive problems wholly its own...It would not be
excessive to say that no small part of the extraordinary fame of 'Kubla Khan' inheres in its alleged
marvellous conception. Its Preface is world-famous and has been used in many studies of the
creative process as a signal instance in which a poem has come to us directly from the
unconscious."[131]

In 1981, Kathleen Wheeler contrasts the Crewe Manuscript note with the Preface: "Contrasting this
relatively factual, literal, and dry account of the circumstances surrounding the birth of the poem
with the actual published preface, one illustrates what the latter is not: it is not a literal, dry, factual
account of this sort, but a highly literary piece of composition, providing the verse with a certain
mystique."[132] In 1985, David Jasper praised the poem as "one of his greatest meditations on the
nature of poetry and poetic creation" and argued "it is through irony, also, as it unsettles and
undercuts, that the fragment becomes a Romantic literary form of such importance, nowhere more
so than in 'Kubla Khan'."[133] When talking about the Preface, Jasper claimed that it "profoundly
influenced the way in which the poem has been understood".[134] Responding in part to Wheeler in
1986, Charles Rzepka analysed the relationship between the poet and the audience of the poem
while describing "Kubla Khan" as one of "Coleridge's three great poems of the supernatural".[135]
He continued by discussing the preface: "despite its obvious undependability as a guide to the
actual process of the poem's composition, the preface can still, in Wheeler's words, lead us 'to
ponder why Coleridge chose to write a preface...' What the preface describes, of course, is not the
actual process by which the poem came into being, but an analogue of poetic creation as logos, a
divine 'decree' or fiat which transforms the Word into the world."[136]

During the 1990s, critics continued to praise the poem with many critics placing emphasis on what
the Preface adds to the poem. David Perkins, in 1990, argued that "Coleridge's introductory note to
"Kubla Khan" weaves together two myths with potent imaginative appeal. The myth of the lost
poem tells how an inspired work was mysteriously given to the poet and dispelled
irrecoverably."[17] Also in 1990, Thomas McFarland stated, "Judging by the number and variety of
critical effort to interpret their meaning, there may be no more palpably symbolic poems in all of
English literature than "Kubla Khan" and The Ancient Mariner."[137] In 1996, Rosemary Ashton
claimed that the poem was "one of the most famous poems in the language" and claimed the
Preface as "the most famous, but probably not the most accurate, preface in literary history."[138]
Richard Holmes, in 1998, declared the importance of the poem's Preface while describing the
reception of the 1816 volume of poems: "However, no contemporary critic saw the larger possible
significance of Coleridge's Preface to 'Kubla Khan', though it eventually became one of the most
celebrated, and disputed, accounts of poetic composition ever written. Like the letter from the
fictional 'friend' in the Biographia, it brilliantly suggests how a compressed fragment came to
represent a much larger (and even more mysterious) act of creation".[13]

In 2002, J. C. C. Mays pointed out that "Coleridge's claim to be a great poet lies in the continued
pursuit of the consequences of 'The Ancient Mariner,' 'Christabel' and 'Kubla Khan' on several
levels."[139] Adam Sisman, in 2006, questioned the nature of the poem itself: "No one even knows
whether it is complete; Coleridge describes it as a 'fragment,' but there is a case for doubting this.
Maybe it is not a poem at all. Hazlitt called it 'a musical composition'...Though literary detectives
have uncovered some of its sources, its remains difficult to say what the poem is about."[140] In
describing the merits of the poem and its fragmentary state, he claimed, "The poem stands for

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itself: beautiful, sensuous and enigmatic."[141]

During the same year, Jack Stillinger claimed that
"Coleridge wrote only a few poems of the first rank – perhaps no more than a dozen, all told – and
he seems to have taken a very casual attitude toward them...he kept 'Kubla Khan' in manuscript for
nearly twenty years before offering it to the public 'rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the
grounds of any supposed poetic merits'".[142] Harold Bloom, in 2010, argued that Coleridge wrote
two kinds of poems and that "The daemonic group, necessarily more famous, is the triad of The
Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and 'Kubla Khan.'"[143] He goes on to explain the "daemonic":
"Opium was the avenging daemon or alastor of Coleridge's life, his dark or fallen angel, his
experiential acquaintance with Milton's Satan. Opium was for him what wandering and moral tale-
telling became for the Mariner – the personal shape of repetition compulsion. The lust for paradise
in 'Kubla Khan,' Geraldine's lust for Christabel – these are manifestations of Coleridge's
revisionary daemonization of Milton, these are Coleridge's countersublime. Poetic genius, the
genial spirit itself, Coleridge must see as daemonic when it is his own rather than when it is
Milton's."[144]

Musical settings
Excerpts from the poem have been put to music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Granville Bantock,
Humphrey Searle, and Paul Turok; and Charles Tomlinson Griffes composed an orchestral tone
poem in 1912 (revised 1916).

Canadian rock band Rush refers to the poem directly in the 1977 song Xanadu, in which the
narrator obtains immortality after having "drunk the milk of Paradise" but goes mad after 1,000
years.[145][146]

British band Frankie Goes to Hollywood alludes to the poem in the song Welcome to the
Pleasuredome from its eponymous 1984 debut album. However, they altered the quoted wording
to "In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a pleasuredome erect".[147]

Notes
1. "I should much wish, like the Indian Vishna, to float about along an infinite ocean cradled in the
flower of the Lotos, & wake once in a million years for a few minutes – just to know I was going
to sleep a million years more...I can at times feel strong the beauties, you describe, in
themselves, & for themselves – but more frequently all things appear little – all the knowledge,
that can be acquired, child's play – the universe itself – what but an immense heap of little
things?...My mind feels as if it ached to behold & know something great – something one &
indivisible – and it is only in the faith of this that rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns give
me the sense of sublimity or majesty!"[8]
2. Leigh Hunt, the poet and essayist, witnessed the event and wrote, "He recited his 'Kubla Khan'
one morning to Lord Byron, in his Lordship's house in Piccadilly, when I happened to be in
another room. I remember the other's coming away from him, highly struck with his poem, and
saying how wonderfully he talked. This was the impression of everyone who heard him."[21]
3. She wrote to Thomas Poole, "Oh! when will he ever give his friends anything but pain? he has
been so unwise as to publish his fragments of 'Christabel' & 'Kubla-Khan'...we were all sadly
vexed when we read the advertisement of these things."[24]
4. Lamb wrote to Wordsworth: "Coleridge is printing Xtabel by Lord Byron's recommendation to
Murray, with what he calls a vision of Kubla Khan – which said vision he repeats so
enchantingly that it irradiates & brings Heaven & Elysian bowers into my parlour while he sings
or says it; but there is an observation: 'never tell thy dreams,' and I am almost afraid that 'Kubla

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Khan' is an owl that won't bear daylight. I fear lest it should be discovered by the lantern of
typography and clear reducing to letters, no better than nonsense or no sense."[25]
5. In about 1298–1299, Marco Polo dictated a description of Xanadu which includes these lines:
And when you have ridden three days from the city last mentioned (Cambalu, or modern
Beijing), between north-east and north, you come to a city called Chandu, which was built by
the Khan now reigning. There is at this place a very fine marble Palace, the rooms of which are
all gilt and painted with figures of men and beasts and birds, and with a variety of trees and
flowers, all executed with such exquisite art that you regard them with delight and
astonishment.
Round this Palace a wall is built, inclosing a compass of 16 miles, and inside the Park there
are fountains and rivers and brooks, and beautiful meadows, with all kinds of wild animals
(excluding such as are of ferocious nature), which the Emperor has procured and placed there
to supply food for his gerfalcons and hawks, which he keeps there in mew.[33]
6. Marco Polo described it this way:
"Moreover at a spot in the Park where there is a charming wood he has another Palace built of
cane, of which I must give you a description. It is gilt all over, and most elaborately finished
inside. It is stayed on gilt and lackered columns, on each of which is a dragon all gilt, the tail of
which is attached to the column whilst the head supports the architrave, and the claws likewise
are stretched out right and left to support the architrave. The roof, like the rest, is formed of
canes, covered with a varnish so strong and excellent that no amount of rain will rot them.
These canes are a good 3 palms in girth, and from 10 to 15 paces in length. They are cut
across at each knot, and then the pieces are split so as to form from each two hollow tiles, and
with these the house is roofed; only every such tile of cane has to be nailed down to prevent
the wind from lifting it. In short, the whole Palace is built of these canes, which (I may mention)
serve also for a great variety of other useful purposes. The construction of the Palace is so
devised that it can be taken down and put up again with great celerity; and it can all be taken to
pieces and removed whithersoever the Emperor may command. When erected, it is braced
against mishaps from the wind by more than 200 cords of silk.
The Lord abides at this Park of his, dwelling sometimes in the Marble Palace and sometimes in
the Cane Palace for three months of the year, to wit, June, July, and August; preferring this
residence because it is by no means hot; in fact it is a very cool place. When the 28th day of
the Moon of August arrives he takes his departure, and the Cane Palace is taken to pieces."[34]
7. Alvares wrote:
The custome is that all the male child of the Kings, except the Heires, as soone as they be
brought up, they send them presendly to a very great Rock, which stands in the province of
Amara, and there they pass all their life, and never come out from thence, except the King
which reignith departeth their life without Heires.[36]
8. In particular, Coleridge's descriptions of the sinuous rills, the scented trees, and the fountain (in
fact a substantial upwelling) are close paraphrases of Bartram's description of a swamp
location in one of the states he visited.[46]

References

Citations
1. "Hit Singles by Joshua Weiner" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/articles/detail/6844
5). Poetry Foundation. 13 September 2017. Retrieved 13 September 2017.
2. "Manuscript of S T Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' " (https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/manuscript-of-
s-t-coleridges-kubla-khan). The British Library. Retrieved 13 September 2017.
3. Holmes, Richard. Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772–1804. New York: Pantheon, 1989.
4. Holmes 1989 p. 165

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5. "Manuscript of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' " (https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/ma

nuscript-of-s-t-coleridges-kubla-khan). British Library. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20
190617140410/https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/manuscript-of-s-t-coleridges-kubla-khan)
from the original on 17 June 2019. Retrieved 25 January 2020.
6. Holmes 1989 qtd. p. 162
7. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep, 2nd edition, William
Bulmer, London, 1816. Reproduced in The Complete Poems, ed. William Keach, Penguin
Books, 2004.
8. Holmes 1989 qtd p. 167
9. Holmes 1989 pp. 166–167
10. Holmes 1989 pp. 161–162
11. "The Coleridge Way" (https://web.archive.org/web/20081123055049/http://www.somerset-rural-
renaissance.co.uk/coleridge-way.html). Somerset Rural Renaissance. 2007. Archived from the
original (http://www.somerset-rural-renaissance.co.uk/coleridge-way.html) on 23 November
2008. Retrieved 2 July 2010.
12. Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 435
13. Holmes 1998 p. 435
14. Perkins 2010 qtd. p. 39
15. Fruman 1971 p. 337
16. Bate 1968 pp. 75–76
17. Perkins 2010 p. 39
18. Perkins 2010 pp. 40–44
19. Monthly Repertory of English Literature, Arts, Sciences, etc. Vol. 4 No. 13 (April 1808), p1. (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=vfBIAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1)
20. Holmes 1998 p. 387
21. Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 426
22. Holmes 1998 p. 426
23. Sisman 2006 qtd. p. 417
24. Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 431
25. Holmes 1998 qtd. p. 429; Doughty 1981 qtd. p. 433.
26. Holmes 1998 p. 434
27. Ashton 1997 pp. 112–113
28. Yarlott 1967 p. 145
29. Mays 2001 p. 511
30. Sisman 2006 p. 417
31. Perkins 2010 pp. 39–40
32. Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes, the Fourth Book, chapter 13, page 415. digital version
from the copy owned by John Adams in the Boston Public Library.
33. The Travels of Marco Polo, Book 1/Chapter 61 (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Travels_of_
Marco_Polo/Book_1/Chapter_61), "Of the City of Chandu, and the Kaan's Palace There". from
Wikisource, translated by Henry Yule.
34. The Travels of Marco Polo, Book 1/Chapter 61, "Of the City of Chandu, and the Kaan's Palace
There". from Wikisource, translated by Henry Yule.
35. Beer 1962 pp. 211, 227.
36. Purchas, VII, p. 383.
37. Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 4, lines 280–287.
38. Fruman 1971 p. 344

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39. Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible (Oxford: University Press for the British Academy,
1968), p. 2.
40. Yarlott 1967 pp. 310–312
41. Sisman 2006 p. 338
42. Beer 1962 qtd. p. 266
43. Beer 1962 pp. 266–269
44. Fruman 1971 pp. 345–346
45. Kastner 1977 p. 110
46. Kastner 1977 p. 110
47. Holmes 1989 p. 164
48. Beer 1962 pp. 235, 266
49. Ashton 1997 pp. 114–115
50. Lowes 1927 pp. 410–411
51. Coleridge 1816 pp. 55–58
52. Sisman 2006 p. 195
53. Perkins 2010 pp. 43–44
54. Perkins 2010 pp. 42, 45–47
55. Fulford 2002 p. 54
56. Bate 1968 p. 76
57. Yarlott 1967 p. 129
58. Mays 2001 pp. 509–510, 514
59. Perkins 2010 pp. 42–43
60. Bate 1968 p. 78
61. Singh 1994, p. 48
62. Roe 2001, p. 265
63. Mays 2001 pp. 509–512
64. Schneider 1967 pp. 88–91
65. Watson 1966 pp. 122–124
66. Holmes 1989 p. 166
67. Rzepka 1986 pp. 106–109
68. Ashton 1997 p. 115
69. Rzepka 1986 p. 108
70. Jasper 1985 pp. 44–46
71. Ashton 1997 pp. 115–116
72. Rzepka 1986 pp. 108–109
73. Radley 1966 pp. 77–80
74. Barth 2003 pp. 57–70, 82
75. Yarlott 1967 pp. 141–142
76. Yarlott 1967 p. 142
77. Yarlott 1967 p. 144
78. Bloom 1993 pp. 218–219
79. Bloom 1993 pp. 219–220
80. Bloom 1993 p. 220
81. Beer 1962 pp. 227–231
82. Jasper 1985 p. 45
83. Yarlott 1967 pp. 130–131
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84. Beer 1962 pp. 227–240

85. Beer 1962 pp. 233–236
86. Yarlott 1967 pp. 130–132
87. "Kubla Khan: poem by Coleridge" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kubla-Khan). Britannica.
12 September 2023.
88. Ashton 1997 p. 112
89. Jackson 1970 pp. 8–10
90. William Hazlitt, 2 June 1816 review in the Examiner, Holmes 1998 qtd p. 434
91. William Roberts, August 1816 review in British Review, qtd. in Jackson 1970 p. 225
92. July 1816 anonymous review in the Augustan Review, qtd. in Jackson 1995 p. 266
93. July 1816 anonymous review in the Anti-Jacobin, qtd. in Jackson p. 221
94. Josiah Conder, June 1816 Eclectic Review, qtd in Jackson p. 212
95. Anonymous review for the July 1816 Literary Panorama, qtd. in Jackson 1970 pp. 215–216
96. January 1817 anonymous review in Monthly Review, qtd. in Jackson 1970 p. 246
97. Jackson 1970 qtd. p. 475-6. Hunt said: "[Kubla Khan] is a voice and a vision, an everlasting
tune in our mouths, a dream fit for Cambuscan and all his poets, a dance of pictures such as
Giotto or Cimabue, revived and re-inspired, would have made for a Storie of Old Tartarie, a
piece of the invisible world made visible by a sun at midnight and sliding before our
eyes...Justly is it thought that to be able to present such images as these to the mind, is to
realise the world they speak of. We could repeat such verses as the following down a green
glade, a whole summer's morning."
98. Sheppard 1847 p. 170
99. Caine 1883 p. 65
100. Anonymous 1885. p. 283
101. Anonymous, The Church Quarterly Review, 1894 p. 175.
102. Land 1895 p. 284
103. Woodberry 1897 p. 3849
104. Woodberry 1897 p. 3851
105. Lowes 1927 p. 3
106. Lowes 1927 pp. 4–5
107. Lowes 1927 pp. 409–410
108. Lowes 1927 p. 410
109. Lowes 1927 pp. 412–413
110. Watson 1966 p. 11
111. Burke 1986 p. 33
112. Eliot 1975 p. 90
113. Yarlott 1967 p. 127
114. Furst 1979 p. 189
115. Knight 1975 p. 213
116. House 1953 pp. 117–118
117. Schneider 1953 p. 91
118. Schneider 1967 pp. 92–93
119. Beer 1962 p. 212
120. Beer 1962 p. 242
121. Radley 1966 pp. 18–19
122. Radley 1966 p. 57
123. Radley 1966 pp. 77–78

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124. Radley 1966 p. 80

125. Radley 1966 p. 146
126. Watson 1966 p. 9
127. Watson 1966 p. 122
128. Watson 1966 p. 130
129. Yarlott 1967 pp. 127–128
130. Bate 1968 p. 75
131. Fruman 1971 p. 334
132. Wheeler 1981 p. 28
133. Jasper 1985 pp. 14, 19
134. Jasper 1985 p. 43
135. Rzepka 1986 pp. 109–110
136. Rzepka 1986 p. 112
137. McFarland 1990 p. 42
138. Ashton 1997 p. 111
139. Mays 2002 p. 91
140. Sisman 2006 p. 193
141. Sisman 2006 p. 196
142. Stillinger 2010 p. 157
143. Bloom 2010 p. 3
144. Bloom 2010 p. 14
145. https://www.rush.com/songs/xanadu
146. "Readers' Poll: The 10 Best Rush Songs" (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/readers-poll
-the-10-best-rush-songs-20150304/xanadu-20150304). Rolling Stone. 4 March 2015.
Retrieved 5 October 2017.
147. Ingham, Michael (2022). The Intertextuality and Intermediality of the Anglophone Popular
Song. Cambridge Scholars Publishering. p. 76.

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Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1921). Coleridge, Ernest Hartley (ed.). The Poems of Samuel Taylor
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External links
Full text of the poem (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/kubla-khan)
Explicated for an undergraduate class (https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/11/04/samuel-taylor-colerid
ge/)
Kubla Khan Analysis (http://www.englishromantics.com/kublakhan/analysis.htm), another
explication of the poem by JM Schroeder
Kubla Khan (https://librivox.org/search?title=Kubla+Khan&author=Coleridge&reader=&keyw
ords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=&sort_order=catalog_
date&search_page=1&search_form=advanced) public domain audiobook at LibriVox

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