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.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

These are the famous opening lines (1–11) of Coleridge’s poem, which together constitute the first stanza. These lines set the scene where much of the rest of the poem will play out. That is, they establish a basic overview of the Khan’s summer capital in Xanadu (a misspelling of Shangdu), with its lush surroundings as well as its two most important features: a mysterious “pleasure-dome” and a “sacred river” called Alph. In the subsequent stanza, the speaker will return to each of the latter two features and give more elaborate—and far stranger—descriptions of them. In addition to giving an ordinary description of a place that will later become increasingly bizarre, these lines are also important for the way they replicate a sentence from a seventeenth-century travelogue. Coleridge was allegedly reading from Samuel Purchas’s 1625 work Purchas His Pilgrimes when he fell into the opium-induced dream that inspired the poem. According to the story, he fell asleep while reading the following sentence:

In Xaindu did Cublai Can build a stately palace, encompassing sixteen miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile meddowes, pleasant springs, delightful streams, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure.

Coleridge replicates most of the details in this sentence in his opening stanza in near-identical form. The main deviation, of course, is that Purchas’s “stately palace” becomes Coleridge’s “stately pleasure-dome.”

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced

Lines 12–19 constitute the opening of the long second stanza. The first noteworthy aspect of this passage is the suddenness of its break from the first stanza, which ends with a lovely description of Xanadu’s “sunny spots of greenery” (line 11). In sharp contrast to the idyllic imagery presented there, the second stanza suddenly injects a sense of the supernatural. The “deep romantic chasm” that slices into the hillside is at once “savage” and “enchanted”—marked by the presence of the “holy” and at the same time “haunted” by a ghostly figure “wailing for her demon-lover.” What’s more, the speaker goes on to describe how this chasm is itself alive, “seething” in a “ceaseless turmoil” that approximates a panting animal. The chasm’s aliveness is unsettling and seems closely linked to dark supernatural forces. Yet as the speaker concludes, from out of this living place there also springs “a mighty fountain,” which turns out to be the source of the sacred river, Alph, that flows through Xanadu. In the speaker’s dreamscape, the holy and the demonic share an ambiguous coexistence.

   A damsel with a dulcimer
   In a vision once I saw:
   It was an Abyssinian maid
   And on her dulcimer she played,    
   Singing of Mount Abora.
   Could I revive within me
   Her symphony and song,
   To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

Just as the second stanza made a sudden break from the first, so too does the opening of the third stanza (lines 37–47) make a sudden break from the second. The second stanza ends with the speaker describing Kubla Khan’s pleasure-dome. In the passage quote here, however, the speaker suddenly leaves their dream of Xanadu behind and starts discussing an altogether different dream. This second dream took place not in China but in Ethiopia, where “an Abyssinian maid” sang a song while accompanying herself on a string instrument known as a dulcimer. Curiously, the speaker doesn’t describe this second dream in nearly as much detail as the first. Instead, the brief recollection of their Abyssinian dream introduces a more general thought about the gap between dreams and the waking world. The speaker thinks that if they could simply remember the tune the Abyssinian woman sang in their second dream, then they might be able to build the pleasure-dome they saw in their dream of Xanadu. The implication, of course, is that the speaker can’t recall the woman’s “symphony and song”—at least, not with any clarity. And if they can’t revive her song, then the speaker stands no real chance of reconstructing “that sunny dome.”

And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
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.

Lines 48–54 conclude the poem with a bizarre twist. The speaker has just fantasized about reconstructing the Khan’s pleasure-dome in their very own caves of ice. Though they seem implicitly to recognize the absurdity of this fantasy, the speaker continues to develop it. They seem to imagine other people coming upon their real-world caves and finding there a terrifying man with “flashing eyes” and “floating hair.” It isn’t at all clear who this man is. It could be a transformed version of Kubla Khan, or perhaps an avatar of the speaker themself. Regardless, what’s remarkable about this figure is that, though his appearance may be demonic, he also exhibits something of the sacred. The speaker indicates as much in the final two lines, which allude to the biblical book of Exodus. There, Moses promises the Israelites that God will send nourishing bread and honey-like liquid called “manna.” If the figure described here has fed on manna-like “honey-dew” and “drunk of the milk of Paradise,” then the suggestion is that he belongs among God’s chosen people. The poem thus ends with an unsettling embodiment of “holy dread” whose presence insists on the ambiguous coexistence of good and evil.

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