Kubla Khan: S.T. Colridge

Kubla Khan is the masterpiece of S.T. Colridge. ‘Kubla Khan’ was written in 1798 and published in 1816. In the introduction of ‘Kubla Khan’ the circumstances have been discussed that prompted to write the poem:
‘In the summer of the year 1797, the author, then in ill health and retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in ‘Purchas’s Pilgrimage’:
‘Here the Khan Kubla commanded the palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were enclosed with a wall’
The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external sensed, during which time he had the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines, if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose before him as things, with a parallel production of correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On waking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general import of the vision, yet with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but alas! Without the after restoration of the latter!
Substance: Kubla Khan , a great powerful king of China, once ordered a magnificent pleasure palace to be built in Xanadu. Alph, the sacred river, ran through deep and immeasurable caverns in the hill and finally fell into a dark, subterranean sea. Therefore, a fertile land had been created. The land was ten miles in perimetere, and it was enclosed with walls and towers. It had beautiful gardens, meandering streams, trees with fragrant flowers There were forests as old as hills in the midst of which there were green grassy land bright with sunshine.
There was a deep, mysterious chasm which went down a green hill across a wood covered of cedar trees. It was a savage, holy and enchanted place like one we would imagine to be the haunt of a woman who wandered about moaning in search of her demon lover who deserted her after having made love to her, in the light of the waning moon.
From this chasm a powerful spring of water gushed forth every moment, producing a continuous roaring sound. With every burst of the water huge pieces of rocks were thrown up. They fell on the earth and rebounded like hailstones after hitting the ground or scattered grain when beaten by the thresher’s flail. The fountain that came out with these rocks and stones took the form of the sacred river, Alph, which followed a meandering path of five miles through wood and valley and reached the deep and dark caverns, and then fell with noise in the lifeless sea. In the midst of the loud noise of the river Kubla Khan heard the voices of the ancestors prophesying war.
The shadow of the dom of this pleasure house fell on the waves in the middle of the river and a mixed sound of the gushing waters of the fountain and the waters flowing noisily through deep caves was heard. The pleasure-palace of Kubla Khan was a wonder of human effort. It was unique in its design. It was surrounded on all sides with the caves of ice, and its dome was flooded with sunshine.
The poet is reminded dream he once had. It was an Abyssinian girl playing on a dulcimer, and sang of Mount Abora. The song charmed the poet. Colridge felt if he could recapture the melody & sweetness of her song in his imagination, it would have been so inspired that he would create an imaginary pleasure place which will be as beautiful as Kubla’s in his poetry. He will describe the pleasure dome and those caves of ice so vividly that those who would listen to his poetry would see it clearly in their imagination. When people will listen to him should keep their eyes closed with reverential fear because he has fed on honey-dew and drunk the mild of Paradise.
Related links:
http://www.sesk.org/Aesthetics/Literature/English/Romantics/Coleridge/KublaKhan.htm
http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Kubla_Khan.html