Kubla Khan
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1816)
Poemc. 2 pages
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.”
One great work, every day
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1816)
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1816)
Coleridge fell asleep reading about Kublai Khan's palace, dreamed hundreds of lines of poetry, woke and began writing them down, was interrupted by 'a person from Porlock,' and lost the rest. What survives is a fragment: fifty-four lines of incantatory music about Xanadu, the pleasure dome, the sacred river, the woman wailing for her demon lover. The poem defies interpretation and refuses to need it. The images arrive like visions; the sounds hypnotize. Coleridge apologized for publishing a fragment. We treasure it because fragments are sometimes more complete than completeness.