Kubla Khan

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1816 · 1 min read · 54 lines

In short

“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a poem about a ruler’s splendid landscape and the imagination’s power to recreate it. It opens in Xanadu, where Kubla orders a pleasure dome beside the sacred river Alph. Walled gardens, fragrant trees, and ancient forests give way to a violent chasm, where a fountain throws up rocks and sends the river toward dark caverns. Amid the rushing water, Kubla hears ancestral voices predicting war. The dome’s reflection joins sunlight with caves of ice. The poem then turns to a speaker remembering a woman playing a dulcimer. He imagines recovering her song and building the dome through music, becoming a figure whom listeners would regard with wonder and fear.

In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.So twice five miles of fertile groundWith walls and towers were girdled round;

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rillsWhere blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree;And here were forests ancient as the hills,And folding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh that deep romantic chasm which slantedDown the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!A savage place! as holy and inchantedAs e’er beneath a waning moon was hauntedBy 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 burstHuge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:And mid these dancing rocks at once and everIt flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motionThrough 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 farAncestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasureFloated midway on the waves;Where was heard the mingled measureFrom the fountain and the caves.It was a miracle of rare device,A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimerIn a vision once I saw:It was an Abyssinian maidAnd on her dulcimer she play’d,

Singing of Mount Abora,Could I revive within meHer 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 drank the milk of Paradise.

What it means, line by line

Lines 1 to 11: Kubla orders a grand pleasure dome in Xanadu, near a sacred river that disappears into immense caverns and a dark sea. Walls and towers enclose fertile land, gardens, and old forests. The rich, orderly setting suggests human control, but the river’s mysterious destination introduces something beyond human measurement.

Lines 12 to 24: The view shifts to a deep chasm described as both holy and wild. A comparison to a woman mourning her demon lover gives the place an eerie emotional force. The earth seems to breathe as a fountain bursts upward, tossing rocks and producing the sacred river. These energetic images disrupt the gardens’ earlier calm.

Lines 25 to 36: The river winds through the landscape before plunging into caverns and a lifeless ocean. Its turmoil accompanies ancestral voices warning Kubla of war. The dome’s reflection then appears amid sounds from fountain and caves. By joining a sunny building with icy caverns, the poem presents beauty as a startling union of opposites.

Lines 37 to 54: The speaker recalls a vision of an Abyssinian woman singing and playing a dulcimer. If he could recover her music, he believes he could recreate the dome in the air for others to see. His imagined audience would respond with protective rituals and sacred fear, treating his inspired power as both marvelous and dangerous.

Three questions to think about

How do the gardens and the chasm offer different views of the landscape around Kubla’s dome?
What effect does the warning of war have on the poem’s images of pleasure and beauty?
How does the imagined audience’s response shape your understanding of the speaker’s hoped-for creative power?

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More by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Lyrische Balladen und einige andere Gedichte (1798)

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