Kubla Khan ordered the erection of a magnificent pleasure palace on the banks of the sacred river ‘Alph’ which flowed underground for a long distance through unfathomable caves into a sea where the rays of the sun could no penetrate.Īccordingly, for this purpose, a plot of fertile land covering ten miles was enclosed with walls and towers all around. In these lines from the poem Kubla Khan, the poet Samuel Tayler Coleridge narrates how Kubla Khan ordered a stately pleasure house to be built and what was subsequently done to get it built. Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree Īnd here were forests ancient as the hills, With walls and towers were girdled round Īnd there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, The judicious use of hard consonants has given occasionally the effect of force and harshness. The whole poem is bound together by a network of alliteration, the use of liquid consonants, and onomatopoeia. The rhythm and even the length of the lines are varied to produce subtle effects of harmony. The main appeal of the poem lies in its sound effects. The musical effect of the poem is unsurpassed. The supernatural atmosphere is evoked chiefly through suggestion and association. Its remote setting and its delicate imaginative realism render it especially romantic. Its vision is wrought out of the most various sources –oriented romance and travel books. Being essential to the nature of a dream, it enchants by the loveliness of its color, artistic beauty, and sweet harmony. ‘Kubla Khan’ is the finest example of pure poetry removed from any intellectual content. It describes the palace built by Kubla Khan, the grandson of Chengis Khan, the great rule of central Asia. On being fully awake, he wrote the poem down. Coleridge had taken a dose of opium as an anodyne, and his eyes closed upon the line in the book, “At Zanadu Kubla Khan built a pleasure palace.” But this opened his creative vision, and the poem of about 200 lines was composed in this state of waking dream. The vision embodied in Kubla Khan was inspired by the perusal of the travel book, Purchas His Pilgrimage. The whole poem is pervaded by an atmosphere of dream and remains in the form of a vision. Coleridge composed his poem, ‘Kubla Khan’, in a state of semi-conscious trance either in the autumn of 1797 or the spring of 1798 and published in 1816.

Lady saw liquid rhythm