The “gardens” here suggest the idealized fruit of creativity, or, symbolically, the poem in its perfect, unattainable state. These lines display Coleridge’s control of rhyme. 2 A stately pleasure-dome decree:. Having ingested opium as a treatment for his poor health, Coleridge awoke to an upwelling of poetic inspiration. 1 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan. In this final stanza, we encounter the speaker himself. The thunderous river of the poetic imagination produces “chaffy grain”: plenty of waste along with the occasional gem. Considering the Abyssinian woman’s role as poetic muse, the dulcimer may serve as an allusion to the lyre, a stringed instrument strongly associated with the poetic traditions of ancient Greece. The Xanadu we encounter in the poem is itself a fantasy of the speaker, who turns out to be a crazed man with “flashing eyes” and “floating hair.” Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” is thus a poem aware of its own limitations as a poem, a quality that perhaps paradoxically adds to the poem’s richness and value. a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: 8 And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,. In this image, we see the palace casting its shadow on the sea below, a representation of how paradise and perfection loom over the results of artistic creation. A Fragment." In a sense, those first two stanzas become a poem within the poem, a dream the speaker awakens from. endstream endobj 328 0 obj <>/Metadata 27 0 R/Outlines 154 0 R/PageLayout/OneColumn/Pages 325 0 R/StructTreeRoot 159 0 R/Type/Catalog>> endobj 329 0 obj <>/Font<>>>/Rotate 0/StructParents 0/Type/Page>> endobj 330 0 obj <>stream The intended feeling in these lines is that of trouble brewing outside of paradise. “Alph” is a shortening of Alpheus, or Alfeios, the longest-running river in the Peloponnesian peninsula of Greece. Light is our fundamental metaphor for conscious knowledge: hence, the “Age of Enlightenment.” Coleridge’s “sunless sea” is a perfect amalgam of the two, a representation of the inscrutable unconscious depths within each person. At this stanza break, the subject shifts from the imagined Xanadu to the speaker, a poet who brings himself into the poem. Xanadu, also known as Shangdu, was the capital of the Khan empire in China during the 13th century. 327 0 obj <> endobj The poem is an attempt of the poet to describe the beautiful setting that he witnessed in his dream. Beneath the lamp the lady bowed, And slowly rolled her eyes around; Then drawing in her breath aloud, Like one that shuddered, she unbound The cincture from beneath her breast: Her silken robe, and inner vest, Dropt to her feet, and full in view, Behold! h��W�n�F�K��@/ Z���SFm�n�&Fj9M. It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she The shadow of the palace is a haunting figure of what could be. In the poem’s imagery, it is clear that the act of creation immediately mars the ideal garden. Since the disclosure of the Crewe Manuscript, the relevance and value of the 1816 Preface have been This may be an allusion to the symbolism of the honey-dew melon, which was considered an ambrosial food of Greek and Roman gods. Lines of verse began to pour from his pen. In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where 5 Down to a sunless sea.. 6 So twice five miles of fertile ground.
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