Kubla Khan

poem by Coleridge

Also known as: “Kubla Khan; or, a Vision in a Dream”

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In full:: Kubla Khan; or, a Vision in a Dream

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Kubla Khan, poetic fragment by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 1816. According to Coleridge, he composed the 54-line work while under the influence of laudanum, a form of opium. Coleridge believed that several hundred lines of the poem had come to him in a dream, but he was able to remember only this fragment after waking.

The poem begins with these well-known lines:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

and concludes:

4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul

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Famous Poets and Poetic Form

Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Because of the exotic imagery and rhythmic cadence of the poem, early critics decided that it should be read simply as a reverie and enjoyed for its vivid and sensual qualities. After studying Coleridge’s mythological and psychological interests, later critics held that the work had a complex structure of meaning and was basically a poem about the nature of human genius.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.

Xanadu

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Introduction References & Edit History

Xanadu

fictional place

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Xanadu, place in the opium-induced vision that English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge recorded in the poetic fragment “Kubla Khan” (1798). Coleridge’s fantasyland was based on Shangdu (“Upper Capital”), near present-day Duolun in Inner Mongolia, to which the real Kublai Khan moved the seat of Mongol government in the early 1260s.

Coleridge’s name Xanadu persisted in common usage. In Orson Welles’s film Citizen Kane (1941), it is the name given to the palatial estate of Charles Foster Kane, the film’s protagonist. Since then the name has been used in many contexts—including songs, a musical, a ballet, and a film—to suggest the idyllic, the luxurious, and the exotic.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.