Kubla Khan Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph1, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man 5 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 rills2, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; 10 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 cover3! A savage place! as holy and enchanted 15 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: A damsel with a dulcimer5 20 Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst In a vision once I saw: Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, It was an Abyssinian6 maid, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail4: And on her dulcimer she played, 40 7 And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever Singing of Mount Abora . It flung up momently the sacred river. Could I revive within me 25 Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Her symphony and song, Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, To such a deep delight 'twould win me Then reached the caverns measureless to man, 45 That with music loud and long And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: I would build that dome in air, And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far That sunny dome! those caves of ice! 30 Ancestral voices prophesying war! And all who heard should see them there, The shadow of the dome of pleasure And all should cry, Beware! Beware! Floated midway on the waves; 50 His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Where was heard the mingled measure Weave a circle round him thrice, From the fountain and the caves. And close your eyes with holy dread, 35 It was a miracle of rare device, For he on honey-dew hath fed A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! And drunk the milk of Paradise.

1 Probably a reference to the Greek river Alpheus, which flows into the Ionian Sea, and whose waters are fabled to rise up again in Sicily. 5 Musical instrument that is often plaed by striking the strings with small 2 Winding streams hammers. 3 Crossing diagonally under a covering growth of cedar trees 6 Ethiopian. Ethiopia is in northeast Africa. 4 Heavy, whip like tool used to thresh, or beat, grain in order to separate 7 Probably a reference to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, in Ethiopia, is a the kernels form their husks. mythical, earthly paradise. Questions:

1. How does the description of the land surrounding Xanadu in lines 1-11 contrast with the description in lines 12-16?

2. What changes in imagery and tone occur in line 15?

3. What does the flow of the sacred river represent to Coleridge?

4. What does line 30 suggest about Kubla’s destiny?

5. What examples of alliteration can you find in lines 37-45? What effects do they create?

6. In the third stanza, what does the speaker see in a vision? What does the speaker say he wants to do?

7. What could the “dome in air” which the speaker wants to create symbolize?

8. How could this poem be about the creation of a poem?

9. Coleridge says the poem came to him while he slept and the he wrote it down exactly as he remembered it. List two phrases that create a dreamlike image of mystery and strangeness.

10. Coleridge stated that his purpose in poetry was to create a “willful suspension of disbelief.” Does he succeed? How? Why?