Imagine Passion: A Look at the Poem "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

As famous French writer Stendhal comments, “Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.” Perhaps that is why some people just hate to read romance. It seems that something in the pleasure of sexuality is lost when it hits the pages of a trashy romance novel. Ages before contemporary writers such as Nora Roberts began pouring steamy affairs onto the pages of paperbacks, poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge perfected the art of describing pleasure without spoiling it. In an example of this perfection, Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” uses images from nature to describe the intense pleasure found in the sensations of a sexual experience, through the metaphor of a palace, comparing this pleasure also to the joy of experiencing great creative inspiration. 

The poem can be broken down into three sections. In the first section, lines 1 to 11, Coleridge sets up the metaphor of the palace. He uses natural imagery to give the feeling that this palace is like a beautiful woman. In line 2, he introduces the topic, referring to it as “a stately pleasure-dome,” which he based on a line in Samuel Purchas’ book, Purchas his Pilgrimage, which says, “Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built and a stately garden thereunto.” In presenting “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge explained that he had read this line just before drifting into an opium-induced sleep, and thus the poem is a result of this vision. Because Coleridge introduces the palace as a “pleasure-dome,” the tone of the poem is therefore marked to be about pleasure and sensuality.