Kubla Khan
Kubla Khan is an unfinished poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 1816.
The poem describes the palace and gardens of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan in dreamlike, visionary language.
Coleridge claimed he composed it in an opium-induced reverie but was interrupted before completing it.
The opening line—In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree—is among the most quoted in English poetry.
English Romantic verse-maker
- RomanticismEmotion-centered artistic movement
- verseMetered poetic passage
- stanzaPoem's line grouping
- imageryVivid descriptive language
symbolism · fragment · vision · meter · rhyme · alliteration · assonance · enjambment
Large underground hollows
- measurelessIncapable of being quantified
- gardensCultivated planting areas
- paradiseIdeal, blissful place
- domeRounded vault forming roof
Ability to see
- opiumNarcotic from scored seedpods
- fragmentIncomplete portion of whole
- tranceSemiconscious, unresponsive condition
- reverieAbstracted, pleasant daydream
ethereal · surreal · phantasmagoric · hallucinatory · oneiric · illusory · mystical · otherworldly
Coleridge
English Romantic verse-maker
- RomanticismEmotion-centered artistic movement
- verseMetered poetic passage
- stanzaPoem's line grouping
imagery · symbolism · fragment · vision · meter · rhyme · alliteration · assonance · enjambment · lyricism
caverns
Large underground hollows
- measurelessIncapable of being quantified
- gardensCultivated planting areas
- paradiseIdeal, blissful place
dome · decree · forests · greenery · walls · towers · blossoming
vision
Ability to see
- opiumNarcotic from scored seedpods
- fragmentIncomplete portion of whole
- tranceSemiconscious, unresponsive condition
reverie · ethereal · surreal · phantasmagoric · hallucinatory · oneiric · illusory · mystical · otherworldly · interrupted
dulcimer
Stringed percussion instrument
- warArmed struggle between groups
- PoemsThe Raven, Ozymandias, Invictus, Paradise Lost, Beowulf
- poetrypoem, poems, poetry, verse, verses
- RomanticismWilliam Blake, the sublime, J.M.W. Turner, Eugene Delacroix, emotionalism
- Famous Poetrynevermore, to be or not to be, road not taken, jabberwocky, daffodils
- Romantic Eraromanticism, Beethoven symphonies, gothic fiction, Swan Lake, Nutcracker
- Romantic LiteraturePride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Emma
Kubla KhanParadise Lost
Epic of humanity's expulsion
realism · Don Juan · The Canterbury Tales · The Divine Comedy · prose