Romantic Era Rough Draft

Arden Jacobs

Ms. Wilson

British Literature B

May 9, 2013

Romantic

Romantic poetry makes the reader test the limit of their imagination. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poems are synonymous to imagination. In Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” uses allusions to human desire, a repetition, and irregular meter to parallel his altered state of mind. Though Coleridge was an opium addict he still understood the innermost human desires.

In dreams these human desires; pleasure, beauty, order, chaos, and war, can be expressed more vividly. “Kubla Khan” is considered to be a poem created within Coleridge’s dreams. Since Coleridge was interrupted in the middle of his dream; the poem takes a turn from dream, to hellish nightmare, then finally back the dream. This splits the poem up into three parts: the dream, the interruption, and the renewal. In the dream the allusions are toward the happier desires like pleasure, beauty, and order. “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.” (ll. 8-12). This place described is very peaceful, bright, and full of plant life. After seeing this beautiful place he wakes up from the dream and is unable to fall back asleep due to a visitor. The visitor prevents Coleridge from going back to the place created, thus the poem drastically changes to a darker feel. Since Coleridge is not in the right state of mind he struggles to get back to his paradise. Chaos and anger take hold of his imagination, “Then reached the caverns measureless to man, / And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: / And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far / Ancestral voices prophesying war!” (ll. 27-30). His dream world is totally destroyed. The volcano erupts and makes the river explode. He strives to get back to the dream world and he tries to reimagine the paradise. “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,” (ll. 40-46). The music created by the woman helps him slip back into the dream. To him it parallels the Garden of Eden, with the food of the gods ,“For he on honeydew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.” (ll. 53-54). To most people eating the gods food would be very pleasurable, the idea of pleasure is repeated many times throughout the poem.

Coleridge uses alliteration and repetition to add a musical quality and auditory imagery. There are three main phrases that are repeated throughout. The “pleasure-dome” is a safe place where it is bright and sunny and has a cave of ice. “I would build that dome in air, / That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!” (ll. 46-47) Even people who have problems need a safe haven to fall back on, for Coleridge it was this dome in his dreams. Next, the “scared river” it is what leads to his paradise. “It flung up momently the sacred river. / Five miles meandering with a mazy motion / Through wood an dale the sacred river ran,” (ll. 24-26). The repetition of a consonant ,“M”, an alliteration, is an example of auditory imagery. The consonant mimics the snake like motion of the river through the land. Lastly, the “caverns measureless to man” the river runs through what seems to be endless caverns. In dreams, the imagination is limitless, they are especially limitless to someone of an altered state.

An altered state of mind would also contribute to the irregular rhyme scheme and meter of “Kubla Khan”. Most lines in the poem have a rhyming pair, but there is no particular scheme in which the pairs are arranged. However, there are also lines that do not have pairs that stand out because the ending word feels incomplete. For example, “As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted” (l. 15). Due to “haunted” not being rhymed with anything it seems to be more important because it is alone. Around line 15, the dream was interrupted by the visitor so the line serves as a transition. Also not having a specific rhyme scheme gives the poem more of a dream feeling; dreams are not always continuous, they can jump around. The irregular meter also parallels Coleridge’s state of mind.

Dreams are often do not make sense, however the imagination is limitless. Coleridge proved though he has an altered mind can still put his imagination to the test. He uses the deep human desires, repetition of certain phrases, and an irregular meter to convey his state of mind.