Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Question

Hi, I'm new to the website and was just wondering whether anybody had any opinions on the poem Kubla Khan by Coleridge. Also do you subscribe to the view by Ted Hughes that "the poem cannot be analysed".

Do you believe also that the poem is fragmentary because he was interrupted while writing down his opium induced vision?

Also I was wondering whether you saw the "stately pleasure dome" as futuristic, realistic or imaginary?

Katherine

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Easy questions, J'aime.

1-- No, it's fun to analyze it.
2-- Yes, Coleridge said so himself. And it happens to me all the time.
3-- I see it as highly imaginative.

J&apos;aime La Meilleur · Answer

Thanks for the reply, I'm doing lots of different poems for my AS English course you see, and I just need to have an awareness of other peoples opinions and thoughts of the poems we're studying.

So could I ask what you think of "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" by Lord Byron

MrPedantic · Answer

I wonder whether we need to regard Kubla Khan as a fragment. Could we take the poem and Coleridge's preamble as together forming a satisfactory whole, I wonder?

Maybe the "interruption" wasn't such a bad thing:

"At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour..."

The phrase I've emboldened seems in some ways more poetic than the talk of honeydew and unkempt poets.

MrP

Anonymous · Answer

(This is again MM, under his nom de plume of Anonymous-- MM)

So could I ask what you think of "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" by Lord Byron?

So, we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,	5
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,	10
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

Oh lord! Now the automated censor censors out 'b r e a s t'!

I am not a fan of Byron's poetry, though I envy him his lifestyle. This poem makes a good song, but if I read it in the New Yorker, I would promptly pass on to the joke at the bottom of the page.

MrPedantic · Answer

Thanks for the reply, I'm doing lots of different poems for my AS English course you see, and I just need to have an awareness of other peoples opinions and thoughts of the poems we're studying.

So could I ask what you think of "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" by Lord Byron

If I remember correctly, this song makes its first appearance in a letter to Tom Moore. Byron's letters are very entertaining; you get several pages of absurd anecdote, and then he'll suddenly break into a song or lyric. When the lyrics are printed on their own, they can look a little pallid; but in context, they're much more effective.

As well as the letters, Don Juan, Beppo, and the Vision of Judgement are well worth looking into. They're much more interesting than his serious poems.

In this particular song, I like the change of rhythm in the final line.

MrP

Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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