A Vivid Description of “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
INTRO
The poem was an outcome of the literary portrayal of a dream that was experienced by the poet, after his study of history of the Mongol ruler, Kublai Khan. It is believed to be Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s best works along with ‘The Rime’ and ‘Ancient Mariner and Christabel’. It is a purely imaginative description of the visions he saw in the dream and thought in his mind, which makes the poem all the more interesting and open to lucrative analysis for the reader.
DESCRIPTION
The first stanza takes off with the description of the capital city of king Kubla Khan, Xanadu, which has many beautiful and striking features along with the pleasure-palace built with the royal order from the king himself. The sacred river called “Alph”, runs through this city and then through the caves, which are seemingly very deep, finally to mix with the ocean beneath the landmass, where sunlight couldn’t find a way to enter. The royal city stretched for more than twofold of five miles with rich and fertile land guarded by the walls and towers that surrounded the whole place. The gardens were as vibrant as the sunrays that fell on blossomed fragrant trees, crossed with streamlets that ran haywire all across. The forests were as old as the hills which gathered the greenery showered with the yellowish hue of old leaves.
The poet expresses his delight and awe at the beautiful sight of a deep chasm which descended from the hill, across a stretch of cedar trees. He goes on to compare the purity and mysteriousness of the amazing place with the highly exotic scenery of a woman crying out for his demon-lover under the diminishing moonlight of the dying night. The chasm was the source of an endless disturbance of rumbling noises, where, the poet compares the noise with the panting of the earth. There was an occasional intense burst of a fountain, in between whose eruptions, boulders and fragments of the ground came flying out as if in a rebound course, like the grains during threshing of hay. Sometimes, with the rocks, the river too came gushing out, only to flow through the city, meandering through the lands, through the forests, through the measureless caves and into the lifeless ocean with a loud and bustling sound like a crowd mumbling in confusion. Through this hustle and bustle of the crashing waves of the Alph, Kubla Khan could hear his ancestors warn him about the forthcoming wars.
The poet then describes about the impossible yet imaginable view and experience of the shadow of the pleasure-palace’s shadow falling straight onto the waves of the river, where one could hear the noise of the fountain and the silence of the caves at very same time! It was indeed a miracle that one could also find the strong Arabian sunlight falling on the dome, as well as the ice caves, in the same place.
Now, the poet shifts to a vision he had about an African lady who was very attractive and played the dulcimer, along with singing a melodious song about Mount Abora. He wishes to recreate the heavenly and irresistible melody and the song, which upon accomplishment, would render him with absolute delight and happiness so moving and uplifting, that, with the loud and cheerful song, he would build the pleasure-dome in midair, which is an impossible feat through the eyes of rationality. When the people around him would get a glance of the sunny dome and the icy caves, they would scream in disbelief and shock to warn others about his shining hair and flashy eyes, as if he was possessed by a supernatural entity and then, create three circles around him to confine the magical aura that could infest other people. The people would then stop thinking logically, and come to the conclusion, that the poet had fed on honey-dew and was now experiencing the feeling of being in paradise, as if in a state of trance, leading him to attempt such an impossible task under the influence of a crazy mind.
