What is the context of these lines from "Kubla Khan"?

In his poem “Kubla Khan,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge creates a vivid, haunting verbal portrait of Xanadu, the pleasure palace of the Mongolian leader Kubla Khan. In the poem's second stanza, the speaker turns his attention to the “deep romantic chasm” that runs near Xanadu. This is a “savage place,” the speaker asserts, and he invites readers to imagine exactly how wild and scary and out of the norm this chasm really is. This is why the speaker introduces the image of the “woman wailing for her demon-lover.”

The speaker is not saying that such a woman actually haunts this place, yet he suggests that this is exactly the kind of place where such a ghost may wander. This phrase also invites readers to let their own imaginations run freely. The speaker hints enticingly here, nudging us to think about this woman's story, to wonder what this allusion may actually refer to, and even to make up a suitable tale to go with the reference.

Then the speaker drops the idea of the woman and returns to the power of nature, further describing the reality of this chasm. It seethes with “ceaseless turmoil.” Notice the extreme vividness of the language here. Yet for the poet, this is not even vivid enough, for he uses a metaphor to add to his description. It is as if the earth were an animal, panting heavily, breathing hard as it runs. There is a life in this chasm, a quick, intense motion that nearly exhausts itself yet flows on anyway.

These lines exemplify Coleridge's Romantic style. They are filled with the love of, even reverence for, nature. They introduce suspense and strong emotion. They highlight the centrality of the imagination. They draw readers directly into their drama with their vivid sensory details.

Indeed, the lines that follow continue with further description of the chasm that actually increases the intensity and passion of the scene as the speaker describes a geyser that bursts forth, sending water and rocks flying through the air as the whole scene explodes into a dancing, rushing drama that fulfills the expectant nature of the panting turmoil previously described.

What is the significance of the title "Kubla Khan"?

The title of the poem, the alliterative name of a Chinese ruler, immediately establishes a connection with the Orient. As Edward Said argued in his book Orientalism, in the eyes of the western world, the Orient was not a real place but  a mental construct that lumped dozens of disparate and geographically widespread cultures under one name and characterized them in opposition to the West. If the West was supposed to be the place of rationality, masculinity, concreteness, adulthood and practicality, the "Orient" was the land of enchantment, exoticism and dreams. 

Coleridge, an opium addict, insisted his poem arose from a dream. The poem reflects a Westerner's fantasy of the "Orient" as sensuous dreamscape: it is not about the ruler Kubla Khan, per se, but about the imagined landscape he inhabits: his pleasure dome, the scent of his "incense-bearing tree," "A Savage place!" both "holy and enchanted," inhabited by a "damsel with a dulcimer," where a waterfall crashes into the sea, a place both alluring and dangerous ("Beware"). The title thus signals the move from the rational world of the West into the dreamscape of the Other. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Kahn" is named after a real Mongolian general who conquered China and lived on an elegant estate. This reference is highly significant for a couple of reasons. First, by naming his poem after a real Mongolian conqueror, Coleridge signifies that the topic of the poem (Xanadu, the pleasure dome) is meant to evoke images of China and the Far East. For English readers during Coleridge's day, this location would have been very exotic, and so Xanadu would have accordingly seemed to inhabit a fairy-tale realm. Additionally, by naming his poem of artistic creation after a highly successful conqueror and ruler, Coleridge also comments on the nature of creativity and imagination. If the real Kubla Kahn unified and ordered a vast realm, then the Kubla Kahn of the poem and his creation of Xanadu should be seen in a similar fashion. In other words, Coleridge's Kubla Kahn is not merely creating a pleasure dome; rather, he's ordering space and creating an organized system where there was formerly chaos. Thus, by basing his poem on a real Mongolian leader, Coleridge signifies that his Kubla Kahn not only occupies an exotic, otherworldly realm, but that his artistic creation is an essential ordering force that can unify and control many disparate components.

What is the meaning of the quoted lines in "Kubla Khan"?

The poem "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge was inspired by a dream that the author had after taking opium. When he was writing it down after he awoke, he was interrupted. As a result, he never finished it. That's why the subtitle of the poem is "Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment." In the poem, the speaker describes Xanadu, a pleasure palace that Kubla Khan, the Mongol emperor, built along a river called Alph.

The river initiates as a powerful fountain, flows for five miles past Kubla Khan's palace and gardens, and then disappears into underground caverns, where it finally enters into an underground sea. The lines in question, "Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, / Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail," are part of the description of the chasm from which the river springs forth. A "mighty fountain" intermittently bursts out of the ground. Its force is so strong that it carries with it "huge fragments" of "dancing rocks." The speaker compares these rocks that flow out along with the powerful fountain with hailstones that fall in a storm or pieces of grain that fly into the air and then descend when they are being reaped.

We see, then, that in these lines in question, the speaker is using metaphors of hailstones and reaped grain to help readers picture the fountain that creates the River Alph, which is so powerful that it causes rocks to fly up into the air with its bursts of water.

Explain Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."

This poem was actually the result of an opium-inspired vision of Coleridge that he experienced, then tried to write down, but was interrupted half way through, and forgot the rest. The poem is all that remains of this obviously very vivid hallucination he experienced. However, it is clear that there is a thematic unity to this work that has made this poem one of Coleridge's most famous works, and the strong rhythm and rhyme made it very popular as a poem to learn by heart in schools.

The poem begins by presenting the "pleasure-dome" that was built by order of Kubla Khan in Xanadu, which compares artifice with nature, as the surface appearance of this pleasure dome is compared to the "caverns measureless to man" that lie beneath. The resulting impression of this construction is very impressive, as the speaker describes it as a "miracle of rare device." He then experiences a vision of an Abyssian maid who is playing a dulcimer. The speaker says that if he could recapture that music he would be able to build again that pleasure-dome in all of its beauty and awe-inspiring ingenuity. As a result, people would treat him with fear and trembling:

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.

The way in which the speaker imagines others treating him explores the position of the poet in society, and also the act of creation. The "pleasure-dome" becomes a metaphor for artistic creation, and the way in which the poet is treated by others indicates the strange status that such inventive creators occupy in society. They are both respected but also feared, and just as the damsel and Kubla Khan are praised for their acts of creation, the speaker also recognises that to be a creator is to occupy a rather ambiguous position that brings both fame and respect but also hardship in the way that others relate to the creator.

Explain lines 25-34 of "Kubla Khan".

Lines 25-30 describe the power of the waters of the river that flows through Xanadu. While the opening lines of the poem celebrate Xanadu as a human creation, this passage celebrate the creations of nature. The water is associated with different semantic areas: words like "wood" and "dale" convey an idea of fertility while "caverns", "measureless" and "tumult" suggest the power of water to erode the land. The river flows for five miles before reaching the caves and merging into the ocean in tumult. Note the strong alliteration of S and R in lines 26-28. The noise of the river falling into the ocean introduces a dream-like sequence where Kubla Khan hears ancestral voices that warn of an impending war.

Lines 31-36 continue the dream-like atmosphere, although combining it with precise details and thus creating a series of paradoxes. These climax in line 36 where the pleasure dome is described as both sunny and containing caves of ice. Those critcs who read the poem as a metaphor for literary creation support their reading with these lines. They claim that the pleasure dome is "a miracle of rare device", a description that is fitting for a work of art too. In addition, they take the fusion of opposites in line 36 as representing the process of creating art.

What is the poem "Kubla Khan" about?

This dream vision is about the imaginative and creative process of the poetic genius. The poet-narrator dreams he is the Chinese kingdom of the emperor Kubla Khan, and this dream unleashes a meditation on the power of the poetic sensibility or soul.

The first stanza shows the ordinary beauties of this mythic "Oriental" landscape. This setting represents the ordinary person's imagination. We see walls, towers, and bright gardens, and we smell the "incense-bearing tree." This is a lovely but placid scene.

In the second stanza, we are introduced to the more powerful current of the artistic imagination embodied in the creative genius. This is depicted as a "savage," a "holy," and an "enchanted" place marked by much greater intensity and turmoil than the gentle scene of the first stanza. Here a woman wails for her "demon-lover." A powerful waterfall explodes and cascades down a chasm. This deeply felt creative process, which can produce extraordinary art, is likened to a sexual orgasm, and the poem reaches a climax:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge based the poem “Kubla Khan” on an opium induced dream. This is evident from the otherworldly setting of the poem. The speaker of the poem remains unnamed but describes the mystical land of Xanadu. The poem opens with a marvelous description of the “pleasure-dome” decreed by an ancient Mongol Emperor named Kubla Khan. The poem details the magnificent beauty and scenery in Xanadu including a river (Alph) that winds through caverns and empties into the sea. The enchanted quality of the poem is intensified by the addition of a woman haunting the woods and wailing for her demon lover. The poet continues to detail the intense beauty of the cavern and tells of Kubla hearing the ancestral voices prophesying war. Here the poem begins to seem a bit fragmented with the description of a woman with a dulcimer that he held in a vision. Coleridge ends with the proclamation that he would build his own pleasure palace in the air with her song.