Kubla Kahn Imagery in Coleridge's Essay

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In other words, the simile is more concrete and memorable than the green hill it is supposed to describe. The lack of 'realism' of the poem becomes even more evident through the use of such strange language: the use of language is more important than describing something 'real' like a hill.

If this were not extravagant enough, Coleridge piles yet another image on top of this one that asks the reader to imagine in terms of 'as if': "A mighty fountain momently was forced: / Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst/Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, / or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail." Again, the image of the fountain is actually less striking than the simile, the grain being threshed and the fierce hail.

Images piles on top of images, similes upon similes to the point that by the time the reader arrives in Kubla's palace, he or she has forgotten the original reason for the journey. The use of images are deliberately extravagant, to suggest the exotic nature of the setting, and also to give a dream-like, confused texture to the poem. Coleridge even uses the word "mazy" to describe the path of the river, the path the reader is taking to the pleasure-dome.

Eventually, the presence of Kubla intrudes into the poet's description. But the image of Kubla is not in the immediate present, but of a ruler listening to voices from the past: "And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far / Ancestral voices prophesying war!" The dome is said to float along the waves, and the true significance the dream-like, fragmentary quality of the words thus comes to the forefront.

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The poet, after his stacks of figurative language, similes and metaphors, admits that it is all a dream. "A damsel with a dulcimer / in a vision once I saw." None of these figures are real, they are all of the poet's fantasy -- that is why the similes about the river, the fountain, and the palace itself are more intense that what they are supposedly describing. This is a poem about language, not about reality, even the reality of a dream.

At the end, Coleridge seems to reveal the 'real' reason for the poem: to revive within himself the intense world of Kubla and the damsel, a dream that has been lost. "Could I revive within me/Her symphony and song," he writes. "I would build that dome in air, / That sunny dome! those caves of ice!" says Coleridge -- which is exactly what he has done over the course of the poem: 'built' Kubla's palace in words. And finally, he asks the reader not to open his or her eyes and see life clearly, but to close them: "lose your eyes with holy dread, / for he on honey-dew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise." Kubla's paradise is only accessible in dreams, with closed eyes --….....

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"Kubla Kahn Imagery In Coleridge's" (2009, October 29) Retrieved June 4, 2026, from
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