Kubla Khan - summary and commentary

Kubla Khan





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 here 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 't would 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.

Summary


The speaker describes the “stately pleasure-dome” built
in Xanadu according to the decree of Kubla Khan, in the place where
Alph, the sacred river, ran “through caverns measureless to man
/ Down to a sunless sea.” Walls and towers were raised around “twice
five miles of fertile ground,” filled with beautiful gardens and forests.
A “deep romantic chasm” slanted down a green hill, occasionally
spewing forth a violent and powerful burst of water, so great that
it flung boulders up with it “like rebounding hail.” The river ran
five miles through the woods, finally sinking “in tumult to a lifeless
ocean.” Amid that tumult, in the place “as holy and enchanted /
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted / By woman wailing to
her demon-lover,” Kubla heard “ancestral voices” bringing prophesies
of war. The pleasure-dome’s shadow floated on the waves, where the
mingled sounds of the fountain and the caves could be heard. “It
was a miracle of rare device,” the speaker says, “A sunny pleasure-dome
with caves of ice!”

The speaker says that he once saw a “damsel with a dulcimer,”
an Abyssinian maid who played her dulcimer and sang “of Mount Abora.”
He says that if he could revive “her symphony and song” within him,
he would rebuild the pleasure-dome out of music, and all who heard
him would cry “Beware!” of “His flashing eyes, his floating hair!”
The hearers would circle him thrice and close their eyes with “holy
dread,” knowing that he had tasted honeydew, “and drunk the milk
of Paradise.”


Form


The chant-like, musical incantations of “Kubla Khan” result
from Coleridge’s masterful use of iambic tetrameter and alternating
rhyme schemes. The first stanza is written in tetrameter with a
rhyme scheme of ABAABCCDEDE, alternating between staggered rhymes
and couplets. The second stanza expands into tetrameter and follows
roughly the same rhyming pattern, also expanded— ABAABCCDDFFGGHIIHJJ. The
third stanza tightens into tetrameter and rhymes ABABCC. The fourth
stanza continues the tetrameter of the third and rhymes ABCCBDEDEFGFFFGHHG.


Commentary


Along with “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan”
is one of Coleridge’s most famous and enduring poems. The story
of its composition is also one of the most famous in the history
of English poetry. As the poet explains in the short preface to
this poem, he had fallen asleep after taking “an anodyne” prescribed
“in consequence of a slight disposition” (this is a euphemism for
opium, to which Coleridge was known to be addicted). Before falling
asleep, he had been reading a story in which Kubla Khan commanded
the building of a new palace; Coleridge claims that while he slept,
he had a fantastic vision and composed simultaneously—while sleeping—some
two or three hundred lines of poetry, “if that indeed can be called
composition in which all the images rose up before him as things,
with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without
any sensation or conscious effort.”
Waking after about three hours, the poet seized a pen
and began writing furiously; however, after copying down the first
three stanzas of his dreamt poem—the first three stanzas of the
current poem as we know it—he was interrupted by a “person on business
from Porlock,” who detained him for an hour. After this interruption,
he was unable to recall the rest of the vision or the poetry he
had composed in his opium dream. It is thought that the final stanza
of the poem, thematizing the idea of the lost vision through the
figure of the “damsel with a dulcimer” and the milk of Paradise,
was written post-interruption. The mysterious person from Porlock
is one of the most notorious and enigmatic figures in Coleridge’s
biography; no one knows who he was or why he disturbed the poet
or what he wanted or, indeed, whether any of Coleridge’s story is
actually true. But the person from Porlock has become a metaphor
for the malicious interruptions the world throws in the way of inspiration
and genius, and “Kubla Khan,” strange and ambiguous as it is, has
become what is perhaps the definitive statement on the obstruction
and thwarting of the visionary genius.
Regrettably, the story of the poem’s composition, while
thematically rich in and of itself, often overshadows the poem proper,
which is one of Coleridge’s most haunting and beautiful. The first
three stanzas are products of pure imagination: The pleasure-dome
of Kubla Khan is not a useful metaphor for anything in particular
(though in the context of the poem’s history, it becomes a metaphor
for the unbuilt monument of imagination); however, it is a fantastically
prodigious descriptive act. The poem becomes especially evocative when,
after the second stanza, the meter suddenly tightens; the resulting
lines are terse and solid, almost beating out the sound of the war
drums (“The shadow of the dome of pleasure / Floated midway on the
waves...”).

The fourth stanza states the theme of the poem as a whole
(though “Kubla Khan” is almost impossible to consider as a unified
whole, as its parts are so sharply divided). The speaker says that
he once had a vision of the damsel singing of Mount Abora; this
vision becomes a metaphor for Coleridge’s vision of the 300-hundred-line
masterpiece he never completed. The speaker insists that if he could
only “revive” within him “her symphony and song,” he would recreate
the pleasure-dome out of music and words, and take on the persona of
the magician or visionary. His hearers would recognize the dangerous
power of the vision, which would manifest itself in his “flashing
eyes” and “floating hair.” But, awestruck, they would nonetheless
dutifully take part in the ritual, recognizing that “he on honey-dew
hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.”