Kubla Kahn :: Author, Literary Analysis

Samuel Taylor Coleridges poem Kubla Kahn is an example of imaginative poetry due to an opium addiction. This poem creates its own kingdom and paradise while Colridge expresses his ideas of Heaven and Hell with his own drug induced thoughts and opinions.Coleridge paints the picture of a kingdom, Xanadu, and the surrounding scenery is described with a heavenly, dreamlike vividness that can only result from sess a little too much opium. This kingdom has a pleasure dome that was created by Kubla Kahn. The paradise-like kingdom consists of ten miles of fertile ground and is surrounded by walls that are securely girdled around the property. The gardens are blossoming with many an incense baring tree and are watered by a wandering stream. there is a river, and it gives life to Kubla Kahns creations and runs through caverns measureless to man. The landscape is described in an interesting fashion with contrasting adjectives. It is described as savage, but it is sacred and enchanted. The enchantment is compared to a woman wailing for her demon lover. This image of sexuality leaves the impression that the Earth is anxiously mourning for a fulfillment of evil. The chasem below Kubla Kahns paradise pleasure dome is beset with ceaseless turmoil and chaos. It is described as breathing in fast pants and there is a tidy eruption, resulting in rock fragments bursting out and being flung from the river. The same river that sustained life for the pleasure dome floods the land. Additional to the noises of the chaos are ancestral voiced prophesying warfare and these voices of war are a reminder that the