Stylistic Analysis

SAMUEL TAYLOR
COLERIDGE

(1772-1834)

KUBLA KHAN

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.                            5                                         

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,       10                  

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

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         15                     

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 :

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst           20                           

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion         25                      

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

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 !               30                               

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves; 

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,                 35                                          

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw: 

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,                40                                            

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 't would win me,

That with music loud and long,                      45                                                 

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware ! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!                50                                      

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.

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

            The poem Kubla Khan was inspired by the great Kublai Khan (this is an example

of one of the author's numerous spelling errors in this poem).He was, historically, a

thirteenth-century descendant of Genghis Khan who had built the palace of K'ai P'ing,

which is translated to a homophone of Xanadu.

This poem is divided into two parts.

1) First one, (written in third person), the author talks about the place that Kubla

Khan wanted to build his palace. It is a description of a dome and large garden. This is

portrayed as earthly heaven, surrounded by ancient forests, blooming and bright. It begins

with the allusion to the sacred river Alph. All related to nature. So that is the explanation

of the born, life and death of that river into the sea.
 One of the topics that we found in the poem is paganism against Christianity,

related to the river Alph too. That means referring to an underground river that passed

through dimensions that could not be understood by any man, and then emptying into an

underground sea. Another topic that the poem introduces is biblical reference when it

talks about the garden. It is referring to the Garden of Eden: 'gardens bright with sinuous

rills.' (line 8) ‘Sinuous rills’ can be represented as two different metaphors: 'rills' can

mean either a stream or a valley on the moon. The moon is seen as the source of all

creativity in romantic idealism, and so this first metaphor is significant in the poem. On

the contrary, when it speaks of 'forests ancient as the hills,/ Enfolding sunny spots of

greenery.' (lines 10-11), this reference to the sun contrasts with the valleys on the moon.

The second metaphor refers to that of the snake in the Garden of Eden. The word sinuous

implies snakelike, and the connection of these small tributaries to the river Alph. The

author is talking about a woman who is Eve, and she is 'wailing' for the source of her

desires, literally her demon lover, but figuratively the apple that got her threw out of

Eden.

            Another symbolical characteristic that we found in the poem is the number five. It

can be found twice in Kubla Khan, the first time when speaking of Khan's palace of

Xanadu. Coleridge says 'twice five miles' instead of simply saying ten. The second use of

the number five is after the pleasure dome has been subdued by nature's wrath. The

significance of the number five is huge in paganism. The number five refers to the fifth

element, spirit, which in pagan belief is the source of all magic and life on Earth. Another

number that we found in the poem is number three. The three circles that they 'weave'

around him are both an ancient, superstitious ritual to keep an evil spirit at bay, and a

reference to the holy trinity.

            In the second part of the poem, there is a change in subject, writing and tone.

While in the first line of the poem begins ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan’ (line 1) referring

to a male, the second part of the poem is referred to a female character ‘A damsel with a

dulcimer’ (line 37), emphasizing the change in sections and the difference between

paganism and Christianity, as well as continuing Coleridge's obsession with sex in nature.

The poem closes talking about ‘And drunk milk of Paradise’ (line 54), here the author

maybe tries to say that his life has been very luxury and he was a powerful man. But can

not forget that Coleridge was an opium addict, and maybe in one of that ‘trips’ that he

had, saw that land Xanadu, with its leader Kubla Khan, and later wrote that poem to have

constancy of what he have lived. It seems that was his addiction what made the poem of

only one topic and the lack of succession on the facts that he explains, because the poet

could write what he thoughts at that moment[1].

Another point to consider is the society of Coleridge’s time. Actually he lived in a

period called the Napoleonic era. At this time, the French Revolution was in its final

period, and also the Industrial Revolution could influence his writings, as it took place in

the late XVIII century. The Industrial Revolution brought several changes in society that

affected people, for example the urbanization, changes in agriculture, introduction of

railways, new machineries etc. Like Coleridge’s personality, his writings have a loose

and disorganised connection. His philosophy of unity is one of the fundamental contexts

of his writings. At that time, there are many political and social changes in Britain and

Europe. He moves from radical to conservative, from necessitarian rationalist to

philosophical idealism and Anglican Christianity. So that this representative qualities

give importance to Coleridge’s successes but more to his failures. But his most

considerable influence knew his closest friend, William Wordsworth. The poetry that

produce in that period of intimacy with the Wordsworth family, constitutes perhaps his

least claim to greatness. The ‘Conversation’ poems were mainly written at this time, as
were ‘The Ancient Mariner’, conceived as Coleridge’s principal contribution to

the ‘Lyrical Ballads’, and also both ‘Kubla Khan’ and the first part of ‘Christabel’.

We appreciate several irregularities through the text.

We have found some stylistic resources throughout the poem. First, we can see

the predominance of nature over many other topics, so the semantic field of the poem is

nature. Some words related to it are: “river”(l.3), “sunless sea”, “tree” (l.9), “forests”

(l.10), “sunny” (l.11), “hill” (l.13), “earth” (l.18), “fountain” (l. 19), “rocks” (l.23),

“ocean” (l.28), “waves” (l.32), “air” (l.46). We can found many parallelisms, same word

beginning many lines, in that poem is the word “And” (l. 8, 10, 17, 23, 28, 29, 40, 48, 49,

52 and 54). Other resource found is a comparison using the link “like”: “Huge fragments

vaulted like rebounding hail” (l. 21). On the second part of the poem we can appreciate

another stylistic resource, the hyperbaton: “A damsel with a dulcimer / In a vision once I

saw:”, that is not the correct form of writing, because the first line has to go besides the

second one, there is a change of lines.  The text uses many exclamations to make the

reader feel the musicality of the poem. Repetition of words like “sacred river” (l. 24, 26),

“tumult” (l. 28, 29), and the repetition of the word ‘Beware!’(l.49), is an example of a

common device in romantic writing. It is when an author wants to stress an image or a

feeling that a word is using, he would repeat the word, drilling it into the reader's mind.

According to the relation of this poem with the rest of the poet’s poetic

production, we can explain that ‘Kubla Khan’ together with ‘Christabel’, are two of the

uncompleted Coleridge’s poems.  This was because, according to Coleridge, the parts

that have been not found, were lost in the transition between the dream and the awake.

That poem is written like a chant and uses the Coleridge yambic tetrameter and the

rhythmical alteration.
            It is important to mention the situation of the author when he wrote this poem. In

fact, it was in the summer of the year 1797, when the author retired himself to a lonely

farm house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and

Devonshire, because of an illness. In consequence of a slight indisposition, and anodyne

had been prescribed, from the effect of which he feel asleep in his chair at the moment

that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in ‘Purchas’s

Pilgrimage:’ ‘here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be build, and a stately garden

thereunto: and thus ten miles of fertile ground were enclosed with a wall.’ The author

continued for about three hours to a profound sleep, at least for the eternal senses, during

which time he was the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed from less

than two or three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the

images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent

expressions, without any sensation of consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to

himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper,

instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are preserved. At this moment he was

unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock and detained by him above

an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification,

that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the

vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest

had past away[2].

            Nowadays we can make a relation between the poem and people who take drugs.

Actually, when you swallow some hallucinogenic substances, you get into a “world”

where all seems perfect and “fantastic” for you. No worry neither nostalgia could invade

your brain. In other words, you do not take control of anything. Totally the contrary,

drugs take control of you.  

 Imagination

For Coleridge the imagination is just as poignant as a religious concept as a purely literary
one. The same may be said of John Keats. In a letter to Benjamin Bailey he writes of
imagination; "I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the
truth of the Imagination - what the imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth - whether it
existed before or not...The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream - he awoke and
found it truth." This being a reference to the deep sleep that comes over Adam in which
he dreams about Eve and awakes to find her created. Keats too references the bible in the
existence of the imagination and its role as a creative power. He continues to say, "that it
[Adam's Dream] seems to be a conviction that imagination and its empyreal reflection is the
same as human life and its spiritual repetition." To imagine is to create.

Colderidge makes further reference to the divinity of the imagination in his poem Kubla
Kahn:

"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 drank the milk of Paradise." (7.50-54)

Here we see Coleridge making reference to the Classical Mythology in which one who feds
upon the honey dew, and drinks the milk of Paradise is essentially received into a god status.
So in essence at the end of the poem Kubla Khan, whom has through his imagination created
a unique pleasure dome, actually becomes a god. This embodies the concept of imagination
for Colderidge, it is the power of (a) god: creation.

It is interesting to note, however, that in his poem Kubla Khan Colderidge makes inferences

that perhaps all is not well in Kubla Khan's pleasure dome, with phrases such as "a savage
place/haunted by woman wailing for her demon-lover/turmoil seething/a sunny pleasure
dome of caves of ice" (4-5.14-36). Coleridge leads us to understand that perhaps the creative
power of imagination has an inherently dark side to it. This darker creative concept of the
imagination is further developed by Keats. Most notably in his portraying of The Eve of St.
Agnes in which he uses darker elements, such as the opening stanza with the words "bitter,
chill, cold, frozen, numb," and the passage from the 14th stanza lines 1st and 2nd: "St. Agnes,
Ah it is St. Agnes Eve- yet men will murder upon holy days" and many other tools such as
Porphyro being in the closet, the ensuing storm outside and of course the very descriptive
final stanzas in which we find that all the players in the poem are dead. This is done to give a
decisively dark undertone to an otherwise almost Romeo and Juliet seeming romance.

In The Eve of St. Agnes, Keats uses his idea of dreaming something only to wake and find its
actual creation. Madeline awakens from a dream of Porphyro to find him there. This, mixed
with the decidedly dark undertone, casts a shadow of a disturbing nature upon the poem, and
leads the reader to ponder upon the darker possibilities of the creative power found in the
imagination. In La Belle Dame sans Mercy Keats relates a story of a knight who encounters a
lady - enticing, beautiful, and enchanting - who ultimately leads the knight away into a realm
from which he cannot or will not return. Thus suggesting that perhaps imagination is the
same: It is an alluring, tantalizing, subliminal thing but once we leave the real for the unreal,
we may not be unable to return. We may get stuck out there. We may become lost, crippled
and lose our purpose in life, becoming in a way dead.

The following lines bear the mark of imagination and makes, the poem highly romantic.

It was a miracle of rare device. 

A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3952687

Coleridge experienced this feeling of despair and despondency in his battle with his opium
addiction, and his portrayal of it is�prevalent in his Odes. As did Keats, knowing that his
life would be cut short, and perhaps he would not have time to fulfill his dreams of becoming
an acclaimed poet. To these men the imagination was not some abstract frivolous ideal. It is
not some subjective realm, some distant far away fantasy, but the world itself. It drove them.
It defined them. It shaped them. It ultimately made them. Literally.

Super naturalism in kubla khan

We should also note that suggestiveness is a very important ingredient of Coleridge’s

supernaturalism. We should not forget the closing lines which contain a picture of poetic
frenzy. We see here a great blending of the natural and the supernatural.

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His fleshing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice

And close eyes with holy dread,

For him on honey- drew hath fed.

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Here we see that every line emphasizes the atmosphere of mystery and fear and this is the
key note of the poem.

Coleridge’s Kubla Khan is a triumph of supernaturalism. It transforms the world of everyday

life in to world of enchantment. The atmosphere of strangeness and mystery has effectively
and skillfully been created 

Kubla Khan Symbolism, Imagery & Wordplay

The River Alph

This big, dramatic river takes over most of the first half of the poem. Our speaker is a fan –
he seems to be constantly drawn back to the river. Descriptions of the river largely focus on
ho...

The Ocean
When it shows up in the poem, the ocean is a gloomy, mysterious and far-away place.
Nothing in particular happens there, except that it marks the end of the river. It's a dead-end,
a place where th...

Xanadu - a.k.a. The Pleasure Dome

This might sound a little more exciting than it really is. As far as we can tell, it just means a
big, especially nice palace, with pretty gardens all around it. The dome is a safe, sunny,
happy pl...

The Caverns
The caverns are huge, frightening, cold, and fascinating to our speaker. They appear in the
poem for just a moment at first, as the place the river passes through. As things move along,
however, we...

The Woman and Her Demon Lover

This one comes and goes fast, but it's a really powerful image. The line calls up feelings of
supernatural power, romance and excitement. A waning moon and the spooky chasm all
help set a scene tha...
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

-         Jackson, H. J., ed. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Selected Poetry. Great Britain:

Oxford, 1997.

-         Newlyn, Lucy, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge. United

Kingdom: Cambridge, 2002.

WEBGRAPHY:
 -         Poemas. Colección de poesías – poemas, 2007. 17 Nov.

2007 http://www.poesiaspoemas.com/samuel-taylor-coleridge/kubla-khan

-         Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. 18 Nov.

2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubla_Khan

-         El Sueño de Coleridge. Jorge Luís Borges. 16 Nov.

2007 http://www.caressa.it/testi/borges01.html

-         Cosa Fácil. 20 Nov. 2007 http://cosafacil.blogspot.com/2006/08/kubla-

khan-el-extasis-de-lo-macabro.html

-         Dictionary. From late 18th/Early 19th – Century English, Classical Greek,

and Coleridge Inventions to late 20th – Century American. 16 Nov.

2007http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/resources/dictionary.html#mo

mently

[1]
Ideas taken from www.4literature.com    
[2]
 Ideas based on Selected Poetry (1997). Oxford University Press by H.J. Jackson.           

To have a better understanding of the artistic styles and presentations mentioned above ,
two of the most widely known art pieces , which have been revised and repainted by many
painters on their own version , shall be examined . For the International Gothic Style , The
Coronation of The Virgin painted by Gentile de Fabriano shall be observed as to how the
figures of its presentation where shown in connection with the message of the art work . For
the High Renaissance Style , the version of Madonna ad Child by Lorenzo Di Credi shall be
examined as well

The Elements of Creative Art

Both paintings created by the painters mentioned above have their own characteristics
that depicts the message each painter wants to send the viewing public . The following re the
elements of art and painting that contributes to the said matter of concern . Hence , both
paintings shall be analyzed as to how they are able to convey their message to their
audiences

Space Analysis

The `Coronation of the Virgin ' is more of a wide spaced painting wherein the point of
attention is focused upon the arising `Mary ' towards the direction of heaven . This spacious
factor in the said painting thus contributes to the sense of centralized visionary element that
the painter would want to imply to the viewers..

“Kubla Khan” is not a poetic fragment

resulting from a dream, but a complex
and carefully organized work that
illustrates Coleridge’s poetic principles.
Discuss the statement!
“Kubla Khan” is an excellent example. Nineteenth-century critics
tended to dismiss it as a rather inconsequential or meaningless
triviality. In large part, this was due to Coleridge’s own
introduction to the poem. When it was first published in 1816, he
subtitled it “A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment.”  Those poets and
critics who admired “Kubla Khan,” such as Algernon Charles
Swinburne and Leigh Hunt, did so for its marvelous melodic
quality.  

Arthur Symons called “Kubla Khan”: “One of the finest examples of

lyric poetry. It has just enough meaning to give it bodily existence;
otherwise it would be disembodied music.” We can see the music of
the poem in the following lines:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea’
The opening lines of “Kubla Khan” immediately thrust us into a
strange world where the remarkable is commonplace. Kubla Khan
orders a “pleasure-dome” to be built next to a sacred river that
erupts from a chasm, flows in “sinuous rills” through gardens, then
descends “in tumult” into “caverns measureless to man.” Encircling
the centrally placed dome, walls and towers inscribe a defining
limit around “forests ancient as the hills.” These elegant and
civilized structures actually enclose a “deep romantic chasm … A
savage place” that spurts life-giving waters to the gardens like a
spouting heart or a birthing mother. In other words, despite human
artifice, nature vivifies the whole and gives it meaning. So Kubla
Khan, the prototypical Romantic artist, in order to create his
masterpiece, merely defines a limit with his art around the
uncontrollable magic of untrammeled nature and allows it to feed
and inform his art work. And this, in fact, was the aesthetic
Coleridge and other Romantic poets practiced. For them, poetry, as
an “imitation of nature,” merely delimits in image and form the
divine beauty of raw nature. But in “Kubla Khan,” as Coleridge
informs us in the preface to the 1816 edition of the poem, the wild
nature of the gardens, the fountain “with ceaseless turmoil
seething,” and “Alph, the sacred river,” actually emerge from the
poet’s dream consciousness. The Romantics believed that, at its
core, the self is one with nature. Childhood and dreams fascinated
them thematically in their poetry because both, like nature, were
simple, raw, and unrestrainable. They recognized that in all of its
forms, nature yearns with omnidirected desire. Just like a “woman
wailing for her demon-lover,” nature is, in William Blake’s words,
“Energy.” And what Blake says in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
of this “Energy” also applies here in “Kubla Khan”: “Energy is the
only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward
circumference of Energy…. Energy is Eternal Delight.” The
“outward circumference” of the Khan’s towers and walls
circumscribes the “Eternal Delight” of untamed nature, which is
both “holy and enchanted” and certainly beyond human control.
‘In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid’
Read as the beginning of a longer poem, Coleridge’s poetic
“fragment” sets forth a fantastic world, set both in the “mysterious”
Orient and in the “magical” Middle Ages. But read as a whole
complete unto itself, “Kubla Khan” evokes the fleeting images of a
waking dream that speak not in words but in symbols. And
although many critics point to the Crewe manuscript version of
“Kubla Khan” found in 1934 as proof that Coleridge “consciously”
revised the text, the poem as it stands successfully replicates the
dream state and unveils a genuine glimpse into an archetypal
world, a world Carl Jung, a Swiss psychoanalyst, called the
“collective unconscious.” The first thirty-six lines of the poem
imagistically present a symbolic diagram of the “self,” in which
consciousness strives to find integration with the incalculably
greater depth of the unconscious mind, while the last eighteen lines
reflect upon the power of the unconscious mind when Coleridge
finally realized that the full recollection of his dream work was
impossible. By demarcating a circular space from the “forests
ancient as the hills” with protective walls and towers, Kubla Khan
creates a kind of “mandala” whose circumference is described by
the “stately pleasure-dome” at its center. A Sanskrit technical term
from Tantric Buddhism for a circular “cosmogram” used for
“centering” and meditation, the mandala is a map of the inner
world (the microcosm) that mirrors the outer world (the
macrocosm). According to Jung, the mandala serves to define and
protect the self as it seeks to integrate with the unruly forces of the
unconscious mind. But in “Kubla Khan,” the “sunny spots of
greenery” and the bright “sinuous rills” within the conscious world
of the self appear tenuous, fragile, and minuscule in comparison to
the cavernous deeps of the “sunless sea.” In fact, all of the paired
opposites that appear within the poem (sun and moon, light and
dark, male and female, movement and rest, and good and evil)
struggle without success to find balance within this delicate world
fed by the waters of the collective unconscious.
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
 
As mentioned previously, “Alph, the sacred river,” suffuses
consciousness with creative “Energy.” This overwhelming creativity
fecundates the conscious mind (“twice five miles of fertile ground”)
via the spouting chasm that flings up water and “dancing rocks”
from the underworld. This birth-giving chasm, clearly associated
with the “woman wailing for her demon-lover,” charges the
visionary with almost frenzied inspiration. In the last eighteen
lines, the speaker recalls yet another female figure he had once
seen in vision, the “damsel with a dulcimer.” Her strange song, if he
could but “revive [it] within” himself, would so permeate him with
numinous powers that he would be able to recreate the Khan’s
dome and the “caves of ice” in the air itself. Such magical powers,
the fruit of a kind of possession, would then make the speaker into
an object of taboo, both holy and dangerous to the common sort of
humanity. Like the chasm, both “holy and enchanted,” the inspired
poet becomes an ambivalent figure “beyond good and evil,” for “he
on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.” Not
surprisingly, many critics have commented that this “milk
of Paradise” might be nothing more than laudanum, a solution of
opium in alcohol, to which Coleridge was addicted most of his life.
Unfortunately, Coleridge’s dependence on drugs cut short his
poetically most productive period.
This complexity makes it difficult to fully believe that “Kubla Khan”
is nothing more than the remnant of a half-remembered dream.
The thematic repetition, intricacy of rhyme and metrical schemes,
as well as the carefully juxtaposed images beautifully “harmonize
and support” the poem’s purpose and theme. In “Kubla Khan,”
Coleridge has created more than simple lyric poetry. He has
fulfilled his poetic ideal of a harmonious blend of meaning and
form, which results in a “graceful and intelligent whole.”

'Kubla Khan,' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is one of the most enigmatic and
ambiguous pieces of literature ever written. Allegedly written after a laudanum
(an opiate) induced dream, the author claims to have been planning a two
hundred to three hundred line poem before he got interrupted by a 'man from
Porlock,' after which he had forgotten nearly all of his dream. This may have
been merely an excuse, and the poem was scorned at the time for having no
poetic value, one critic even going so far as to call it 'more a musical composition
than a poem.' This is partly true, as the language seems to strive for an aural
beauty more than a literary beauty, although it accomplishes both. Like many
great artists, Coleridge has been most appreciated after his death, when his
radically different works could be justified, as the ideas presented in his works
hadn't been popular during his life. Coleridge's philosophy in life was very
romantic, and so nearly all of his poems exemplify the romantic ideal, especially
Kubla Khan. This romantic poem uses brilliant imagery and metaphors to
contrast the ideals of romantic paganism with often ingratious Christianity.

The vision of paganism is the first idea introduced in the poem. The super-natural
reference to 'Alph,' or Alpheus as it is historically known, 'the sacred river, [which]
ran/ Through caverns measureless to man/ Down to a sunless sea,' begins this
pagan theme by referring to an underground river that passed through
dimensions that could not be understood by any man, and then emptying into an
underground sea. This also introduces an idea of the lack of human
understanding that recurs at the end of the poem, one of the common elements
that tie the poem's seemingly two-part separate structure together. Xanadu's
walls enclosed 'gardens bright with sinuous rills.' These gardens represent the
Garden of Eden, or a natural paradise on Earth. The degree of nature in this
paradise is such that, although it is a biblical reference,..