Kubla Khan - Poems | Academy of American Poets Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization. browse poems & poets sign up to receive a new poem-a-day in your inbox sign up read this poet's poems Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a leader of the British Romantic movement, was born on October 21, 1772, in Devonshire, England. His father, a vicar of a parish and master of a grammar school, married twice and had fourteen children. The youngest child in the family, Coleridge was a student at his father's school and an avid reader. After his father died in 1781, Coleridge attended Christ's Hospital School in London, where he met lifelong friend Charles Lamb.

While in London, he also befriended a classmate named Tom Evans, who introduced Coleridge to his family. Coleridge fell in love with Tom's older sister, Mary. Coleridge's father had always wanted his son to be a clergyman, so when Coleridge entered Jesus College, University of Cambridge in 1791, he focused on a future in the Church of England. Coleridge's views, however, began to change over the course of his first year at Cambridge. He became a supporter of William Frend, a Fellow at the college whose Unitarian beliefs made him a controversial figure. While at Cambridge, Coleridge also accumulated a large debt, which his brothers eventually had to pay off. Financial problems continued to plague him throughout his life, and he constantly depended on the support of others. En route to Wales in June 1794, Coleridge met a student named Robert Southey. Striking an instant friendship, Coleridge postponed his trip for several weeks, and the men shared their philosophical ideas.

Influenced by Plato's Republic, they constructed a vision of pantisocracy (equal government by all), which involved emigrating to the New World with ten other families to set up a commune on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Coleridge and Southey envisioned the men sharing the workload, a great library, philosophical discussions, and freedom of religious and political beliefs. After finally visiting Wales, Coleridge returned to England to find that Southey had become engaged to a woman named Edith Fricker. As marriage was an integral part of the plan for communal living in the New World, Coleridge decided to marry another Fricker daughter, Sarah. Coleridge wed in 1795, in spite of the fact that he still loved Mary Evans, who was engaged to another man. Coleridge's marriage was unhappy and he spent much of it apart from his wife. During that period, Coleridge and Southey collaborated on a play titled The Fall of Robespierre (1795). While the pantisocracy was still in the planning stages, Southey abandoned the project to pursue his legacy in law.

Left without an alternative plan, Coleridge spent the next few years beginning his career as a writer. He never returned to Cambridge to finish his degree. In 1795 Coleridge befriended William Wordsworth , who greatly influenced Coleridge's verse. Coleridge, whose early work was celebratory and conventional, began writing in a more natural style. In his "conversation poems," such as "The Eolian Harp" and "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," Coleridge used his intimate friends and their experiences as subjects. The following year, Coleridge published his first volume of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, and began the first of ten issues of a liberal political publication entitled The Watchman. From 1797 to 1798 he lived near Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, in Somersetshire. In 1798 the two men collaborated on a joint volume of poetry entitled Lyrical Ballads. The collection is considered the first great work of the Romantic school of poetry and contains Coleridge's famous poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." That autumn the two poets traveled to the Continent together.

Coleridge spent most of the trip in Germany, studying the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Jakob Boehme, and G. E. Lessing. While there he mastered the German language and began translating. When he returned to England in 1800, he settled with family and friends at Keswick. Over the next two decades Coleridge lectured on literature and philosophy, wrote about religious and political theory, spent two years on the island of Malta as a secretary to the governor in an effort to overcome his poor health and his opium addiction, and lived off of financial donations and grants. Still addicted to opium, he moved in with the physician James Gillman in 1816. In 1817, he published Biographia Literaria, which contained his finest literary criticism. He continued to publish poetry and prose, notably Sibylline Leaves (1817), Aids to Reflection (1825), and Church and State (1830). He died in London on July 25, 1834.

Selected Bibliography Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep (1816) Fears in Solitude (1798) Lyrical Ballads, with a few Other Poems (1798) Poems (1803) Poems on Various Subjects (1796) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Oxford Authors (1985) Selections from the Sybilline Leaves of S. T. Coleridge (1827) Sibylline Leaves: A Collection of Poems (1817) Sonnets from various authors (1796) The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1969) The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1912) The Devil's Walk: A Poem (1830) The Literary Remains in Prose and Verse of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1839) The Poetical Works of S. T.

Coleridge (1828) Prose A Moral and Political Lecture (1795) Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character (1825) Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions (1817) Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1973) Conciones ad Populum, or Addresses to the People (1795) Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (1841) Essays on His Own Times; forming a second series of "The Friend," (1850) Hints towards the Formation of a more Comprehensive Theory of Life (1848) On the Constitution of Church and State (1830) Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Selected Letters (1987) Seven Lectures upon Shakespeare and Milton (1856) Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835) The Friend: A Literary, Moral, and Political Weekly Paper (1810) The Friend; A Series of Essays (1812) The Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1895) The Notebooks

 of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1957) The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1949) The Plot Discovered, or an Address to the People Against Ministerial Treason (1795) The Statesman's Manual, or The Bible the Best Guide to Political Skill and Foresight: A Lay Sermon (1816) Unpublished Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1932) Zapolya: A Christmas Tale (1817) Drama Remorse, A Tragedy, in Five Acts (1813) The Fall of Robespierre.

An Historic Drama (1794) Periodicals Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Poet | Academy of American Poets Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization. browse poems & poets read this poet's poems Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a leader of the British Romantic movement, was born on October 21, 1772, in Devonshire, England. His father, a vicar of a parish and master of a grammar school, married twice and had fourteen children. The youngest child in the family, Coleridge was a student at his father's school and an avid reader. After his father died in 1781, Coleridge attended Christ's Hospital School in London, where he met lifelong friend Charles Lamb.

While in London, he also befriended a classmate named Tom Evans, who introduced Coleridge to his family. Coleridge fell in love with Tom's older sister, Mary. Coleridge's father had always wanted his son to be a clergyman, so when Coleridge entered Jesus College, University of Cambridge in 1791, he focused on a future in the Church of England. Coleridge's views, however, began to change over the course of his first year at Cambridge. He became a supporter of William Frend, a Fellow at the college whose Unitarian beliefs made him a controversial figure. While at Cambridge, Coleridge also accumulated a large debt, which his brothers eventually had to pay off. Financial problems continued to plague him throughout his life, and he constantly depended on the support of others. En route to Wales in June 1794, Coleridge met a student named Robert Southey. Striking an instant friendship, Coleridge postponed his trip for several weeks, and the men shared their philosophical ideas.

Influenced by Plato's Republic, they constructed a vision of pantisocracy (equal government by all), which involved emigrating to the New World with ten other families to set up a commune on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Coleridge and Southey envisioned the men sharing the workload, a great library, philosophical discussions, and freedom of religious and political beliefs. After finally visiting Wales, Coleridge returned to England to find that Southey had become engaged to a woman named Edith Fricker. As marriage was an integral part of the plan for communal living in the New World, Coleridge decided to marry another Fricker daughter, Sarah. Coleridge wed in 1795, in spite of the fact that he still loved Mary Evans, who was engaged to another man. Coleridge's marriage was unhappy and he spent much of it apart from his wife. During that period, Coleridge and Southey collaborated on a play titled The Fall of Robespierre (1795). While the pantisocracy was still in the planning stages, Southey abandoned the project to pursue his legacy in law.

Left without an alternative plan, Coleridge spent the next few years beginning his career as a writer. He never returned to Cambridge to finish his degree. In 1795 Coleridge befriended William Wordsworth , who greatly influenced Coleridge's verse. Coleridge, whose early work was celebratory and conventional, began writing in a more natural style. In his "conversation poems," such as "The Eolian Harp" and "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," Coleridge used his intimate friends and their experiences as subjects. The following year, Coleridge published his first volume of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, and began the first of ten issues of a liberal political publication entitled The Watchman. From 1797 to 1798 he lived near Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, in Somersetshire. In 1798 the two men collaborated on a joint volume of poetry entitled Lyrical Ballads. The collection is considered the first great work of the Romantic school of poetry and contains Coleridge's famous poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." That autumn the two poets traveled to the Continent together.

Coleridge spent most of the trip in Germany, studying the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Jakob Boehme, and G. E. Lessing. While there he mastered the German language and began translating. When he returned to England in 1800, he settled with family and friends at Keswick. Over the next two decades Coleridge lectured on literature and philosophy, wrote about religious and political theory, spent two years on the island of Malta as a secretary to the governor in an effort to overcome his poor health and his opium addiction, and lived off of financial donations and grants. Still addicted to opium, he moved in with the physician James Gillman in 1816. In 1817, he published Biographia Literaria, which contained his finest literary criticism. He continued to publish poetry and prose, notably Sibylline Leaves (1817), Aids to Reflection (1825), and Church and State (1830). He died in London on July 25, 1834.

Selected Bibliography Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep (1816) Fears in Solitude (1798) Lyrical Ballads, with a few Other Poems (1798) Poems (1803) Poems on Various Subjects (1796) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Oxford Authors (1985) Selections from the Sybilline Leaves of S. T. Coleridge (1827) Sibylline Leaves: A Collection of Poems (1817) Sonnets from various authors (1796) The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1969) The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1912) The Devil's Walk: A Poem (1830) The Literary Remains in Prose and Verse of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1839) The Poetical Works of S. T.

Coleridge (1828) Prose A Moral and Political Lecture (1795) Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character (1825) Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions (1817) Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1973) Conciones ad Populum, or Addresses to the People (1795) Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (1841) Essays on His Own Times; forming a second series of "The Friend," (1850) Hints towards the Formation of a more Comprehensive Theory of Life (1848) On the Constitution of Church and State (1830) Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Selected Letters (1987) Seven Lectures upon Shakespeare and Milton (1856) Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835) The Friend: A Literary, Moral, and Political Weekly Paper (1810) The Friend; A Series of Essays (1812) The Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1895) The Notebooks

 of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1957) The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1949) The Plot Discovered, or an Address to the People Against Ministerial Treason (1795) The Statesman's Manual, or The Bible the Best Guide to Political Skill and Foresight: A Lay Sermon (1816) Unpublished Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1932) Zapolya: A Christmas Tale (1817) Drama Remorse, A Tragedy, in Five Acts (1813) The Fall of Robespierre.

An Historic Drama (1794) Periodicals Kubla Khan | poem by Coleridge | Britannica.com poem by Coleridge Alternative Title: “Kubla Khan; or, a Vision in a Dream” Similar Topics Bhagavadgita Kubla Khan, in full Kubla Khan; or, a Vision in a Dream, poetic fragment by Samuel Taylor Coleridge , published in 1816. According to Coleridge, he composed the 54-line work while under the influence of laudanum, a form of opium . Coleridge believed that several hundred lines of the poem had come to him in a dream, but he was able to remember only this fragment after waking. The poem begins with these well-known lines: 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. and concludes: 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.

Because of the exotic imagery and rhythmic cadence of the poem, early critics decided that it should be read simply as a reverie and enjoyed for its vivid and sensual qualities. After studying Coleridge’s mythological and psychological interests, later critics held that the work had a complex structure of meaning and was basically a poem about the nature of human genius. Learn More in these related articles: Samuel Taylor Coleridge October 21, 1772 Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, England July 25, 1834 Highgate, near London English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher. His Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, heralded the English Romantic movement, and his Biographia Literaria (1817) is the most significant work of... opium narcotic drug that is obtained from the unripe seedpods of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), a plant of the family Papaveraceae. (See poppy.) Opium is obtained by slightly incising the seed capsules of the poppy after the plant’s flower petals have fallen. The slit seedpods exude a milky...

...poems” but collected by Coleridge himself as “Meditative Poems in Blank Verse”) combine sensitive descriptions of nature with subtlety of psychological comment. “ Kubla Khan ” (1797 or 1798, published 1816), a poem that Coleridge said came to him in “a kind of Reverie,” represented a new kind of exotic writing, which he also exploited in the... 3 References found in Britannica Articles Assorted References Corrections? Updates? Help us improve this article! Contact our editors with your feedback. MEDIA FOR: You have successfully emailed this. Error when sending the email. Try again later. Edit Mode Submit Tips For Editing We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Encyclopædia Britannica articles are written in a neutral objective tone for a general audience. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources.

At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context. (Internet URLs are the best.) Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions. Submit Thank You for Your Contribution! Our editors will review what you've submitted, and if it meets our criteria, we'll add it to the article. Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed. Uh Oh There was a problem with your submission. Please try again later. Close Date Published: April 09, 2012 URL: Access Date: January 17, 2017 Share Samuel Taylor Coleridge | British poet and critic | Britannica.com British poet and critic Edward Young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (born October 21, 1772, Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire , England —died July 25, 1834, Highgate, near London), English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher.

His Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, heralded the English Romantic movement , and his Biographia Literaria (1817) is the most significant work of general literary criticism produced in the English Romantic period. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, detail of an oil painting by Washington Allston, 1814; in the National … Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London Early life and works Coleridge’s father was vicar of Ottery and headmaster of the local grammar school . As a child Coleridge was already a prodigious reader, and he immersed himself to the point of morbid fascination in romances and Eastern tales such as The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. In 1781 his father died suddenly, and in the following year Coleridge entered Christ’s Hospital in London, where he completed his secondary education. In 1791 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge. At both school and university he continued to read voraciously, particularly in works of imagination and visionary philosophy, and he was remembered by his schoolmates for his eloquence and prodigious memory.

In his third year at Cambridge, oppressed by financial difficulties, he went to London and enlisted as a dragoon under the assumed name of Silas Tomkyn Comberbache. Despite his unfitness for the life, he remained until discovered by his friends; he was then bought out by his brothers and restored to Cambridge. On his return, he was restless. The intellectual and political turmoil surrounding the French Revolution had set in motion intense and urgent discussion concerning the nature of society. Coleridge now conceived the design of circumventing the disastrous violence that had destroyed the idealism of the French Revolution by establishing a small society that should organize itself and educate its children according to better principles than those obtaining in the society around them. A chance meeting with the poet Robert Southey led the two men to plan such a “pantisocracy” and to set up a community by the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania . To this end Coleridge left Cambridge for good and set up with Southey as a public lecturer in Bristol . In October 1795 he married Sara Fricker, daughter of a local schoolmistress, swayed partly by Southey’s suggestion that he was under an obligation to her since she had been refusing the advances of other men.

Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent Shortly afterward, Southey defected from the pantisocratic scheme, leaving Coleridge married to a woman whom he did not really love. In a sense his career never fully recovered from this blow: if there is a makeshift quality about many of its later events, one explanation can be found in his constant need to reconcile his intellectual aspirations with the financial needs of his family. During this period, however, Coleridge’s intellect flowered in an extraordinary manner, as he embarked on an investigation of the nature of the human mind, joined by William Wordsworth , with whom he had become acquainted in 1795. Together they entered upon one of the most influential creative periods of English literature . Coleridge’s intellectual ebullience and his belief in the existence of a powerful “life consciousness” in all individuals rescued Wordsworth from the depression into which recent events had cast him and made possible the new approach to nature that characterized his contributions to Lyrical Ballads (which was to be published in 1798). Coleridge, meanwhile, was developing a new, informal mode of poetry in which he could use a conversational tone and rhythm to give unity to a poem.

Of these poems, the most successful is “ Frost at Midnight ,” which begins with the description of a silent frosty night in Somerset and proceeds through a meditation on the relationship between the quiet work of frost and the quiet breathing of the sleeping baby at the poet’s side, to conclude in a resolve that his child shall be brought up as a “child of nature,” so that the sympathies that the poet has come to detect may be reinforced throughout the child’s education. At the climax of the poem, he touches another theme, which lies at the root of his philosophical attitude: …so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself. Coleridge’s attempts to learn this “language” and trace it through the ancient traditions of mankind also led him during this period to return to the visionary interests of his schooldays: as he ransacked works of comparative religion and mythology, he was exploring the possibility that all religions and mythical traditions, with their general agreement on the unity of God and the immortality of the soul, sprang from a universal life consciousness , which was expressed particularly through the phenomena of human genius.

Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies While these speculations were at their most intense, he retired to a lonely farmhouse near Culbone, Somersetshire, and, according to his own account, composed under the influence of laudanum the mysterious poetic fragment known as “ Kubla Khan .” The exotic imagery and rhythmic chant of this poem have led many critics to conclude that it should be read as a “meaningless reverie” and enjoyed merely for its vivid and sensuous qualities. An examination of the poem in the light of Coleridge’s psychological and mythological interests, however, suggests that it has, after all, a complex structure of meaning and is basically a poem about the nature of human genius. The first two stanzas show the two sides of what Coleridge elsewhere calls “commanding genius”: its creative aspirations in time of peace as symbolized in the projected pleasure dome and gardens of the first stanza; and its destructive power in time of turbulence as symbolized in the wailing woman, the destructive fountain, and the voices prophesying war of the second stanza.

In the final stanza the poet writes of a state of “absolute genius” in which, if inspired by a visionary “Abyssinian maid,” he would become endowed with the creative, divine power of a sun god—an Apollo or Osiris subduing all around him to harmony by the fascination of his spell. Coleridge was enabled to explore the same range of themes less egotistically in “ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ,” composed during the autumn and winter of 1797–98. For this, his most famous poem, he drew upon the ballad form. The main narrative tells how a sailor who has committed a crime against the life principle by slaying an albatross suffers from torments, physical and mental, in which the nature of his crime is made known to him. The underlying life power against which he has transgressed is envisaged as a power corresponding to the influx of the sun’s energy into all living creatures, thereby binding them together in a joyful communion. By killing the bird that hovered near the ship, the mariner has destroyed one of the links in this process.

His own consciousness is consequently affected: the sun, previously glorious, is seen as a bloody sun, and the energies of the deep are seen as corrupt. All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Only at night do these energies display a sinister beauty. About, about, in reel and rout The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch’s oils, Burnt green, and blue and white. After the death of his shipmates, alone and becalmed, devoid of a sense of movement or even of time passing, the mariner is in a hell created by the absence of any link with life. Eventually, however, a chance sight of water snakes flashing like golden fire in the darkness, answered by an outpouring of love from his heart, reinitiates the creative process: he is given a brief vision of the inner unity of the universe, in which all living things hymn their source in an interchange of harmonies.

Restored to his native land, he remains haunted by what he has experienced but is at least delivered from nightmare, able to see the ordinary processes of human life with a new sense of their wonder and mercifulness. These last qualities are reflected in the poem’s attractive combination of vividness and sensitivity. The placing of it at the beginning of Lyrical Ballads was evidently intended to provide a context for the sense of wonder in common life that marks many of Wordsworth’s contributions. While this volume was going through the press, Coleridge began a complementary poem, a Gothic ballad entitled “ Christabel ,” in which he aimed to show how naked energy might be redeemed through contact with a spirit of innocent love. Troubled years Eyjafjallajökull volcano Early in 1798 Coleridge had again found himself preoccupied with political issues.

The French Revolutionary government had suppressed the states of the Swiss Confederation , and Coleridge expressed his bitterness at this betrayal of the principles of the Revolution in a poem entitled “France: An Ode.” At this time the brothers Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood, who were impressed by Coleridge’s intelligence and promise, offered him in 1798 an annuity of £150 as a means of subsistence while he pursued his intellectual concerns. He used his new independence to visit Germany with Wordsworth and Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy. While there Coleridge attended lectures on physiology and biblical criticism at Göttingen. He thus became aware of developments in German scholarship that were little-known in England until many years later. On his return to England, the tensions of his marriage were exacerbated when he fell in love with Sara Hutchinson, the sister of Wordsworth’s future wife, at the end of 1799. His devotion to the Wordsworths in general did little to help matters, and for some years afterward Coleridge was troubled by domestic strife, accompanied by the worsening of his health and by his increasing dependence on opium .

His main literary achievements during the period included another section of “Christabel.” In 1802 Coleridge’s domestic unhappiness gave rise to “ Dejection: An Ode ,” originally a longer verse letter sent to Sara Hutchinson in which he lamented the corrosive effect of his intellectual activities when undertaken as a refuge from the lovelessness of his family life. The poem employs the technique of his conversational poems; the sensitive rhythms and phrasing that he had learned to use in them are here masterfully deployed to represent his own depressed state of mind. Although Coleridge hoped to combine a platonic love for Sara with fidelity to his wife and children and to draw sustenance from the Wordsworth household, his hopes were not realized, and his health deteriorated further. He therefore resolved to spend some time in a warmer climate and, late in 1804, accepted a post in Malta as secretary to the acting governor. Later he spent a long time journeying across Italy, but, despite his hopes, his health did not improve during his time abroad. The time spent in Malta had been a time of personal reappraisal, however.

Brought into direct contact with men accustomed to handling affairs of state, he had found himself lacking an equal forcefulness and felt that in consequence he often forfeited the respect of others. On his return to England he resolved to become more manly and decisive. Within a few months he had finally decided to separate from his wife and to live for the time being with the Wordsworths. Southey atoned for his disastrous youthful advice by exercising a general oversight of Coleridge’s family for the rest of his days. Coleridge published a periodical, The Friend, from June 1809 to March 1810 and ceased only when Sara Hutchinson, who had been acting as amanuensis, found the strain of the relationship too much for her and retired to her brother’s farm in Wales. Coleridge, resentful that Wordsworth should apparently have encouraged his sister-in-law’s withdrawal, resolved shortly afterward to terminate his working relationship with William and Dorothy Wordsworth and to settle in London again. The period immediately following was the darkest of his life. His disappointment with Wordsworth was followed by anguish when a wounding remark of Wordsworth’s was carelessly reported to him.

For some time he remained in London, nursing his grievances and producing little. Opium retained its powerful hold on him, and the writings that survive from this period are redolent of unhappiness, with self-dramatization veering toward self-pity. In spite of this, however, there also appear signs of a slow revival, principally because for the first time Coleridge knew what it was to be a fashionable figure. A course of lectures he delivered during the winter of 1811–12 attracted a large audience; for many years Coleridge had been fascinated by William Shakespeare’s achievement, and his psychological interpretations of the chief characters were new and exciting to his contemporaries. During this period, Coleridge’s play Osorio, written many years before, was produced at Drury Lane with the title Remorse in January 1813. Late life and works In the end, consolation came from an unexpected source. In dejection, unable to produce extended work or break the opium habit, he spent a long period with friends in Wiltshire, where he was introduced to Archbishop Robert Leighton ’s commentary on the First Letter of Peter.

In the writings of this 17th-century divine, he found a combination of tenderness and sanctity that appealed deeply to him and seemed to offer an attitude to life that he himself could fall back on. The discovery marks an important shift of balance in his intellectual attitudes. Christianity, hitherto one point of reference for him, now became his “official” creed. By aligning himself with the Anglican church of the 17th century at its best, he hoped to find a firm point of reference that would both keep him in communication with orthodox Christians of his time (thus giving him the social approval he always needed, even if only from a small group of friends) and enable him to pursue his former intellectual explorations in the hope of reaching a Christian synthesis that might help to revitalize the English church both intellectually and emotionally. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. © Photos.com/Thinkstock One effect of the adoption of this basis for his intellectual and emotional life was a sense of liberation and an ability to produce large works again.

He drew together a collection of his poems (published in 1817 as Sibylline Leaves) and wrote Biographia Literaria (1817), a rambling and discursive but highly stimulating and influential work in which he outlined the evolution of his thought and developed an extended critique of Wordsworth’s poems. For the general reader Biographia Literaria is a misleading volume, since it moves bewilderingly between autobiography, abstruse philosophical discussion, and literary criticism. It has, however, an internal coherence of its own. The book’s individual components—first an entertaining account of Coleridge’s early life, then an account of the ways in which he became dissatisfied with the associationist theories of David Hartley and other 18th-century philosophers, then a reasoned critique of Wordsworth’s poems—are fascinating. Over the whole work hovers Coleridge’s veneration for the power of imagination: once this key is grasped, the unity of the work becomes evident. A new dramatic piece, Zapolya, was also published in 1817.

In the same year, Coleridge became associated for a time with the new Encyclopaedia Metropolitana , for which he planned a novel system of organization, outlined in his Prospectus. These were more settled years for Coleridge. Since 1816 he had lived in the house of James Gillman, a surgeon at Highgate, north of London. His election as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1824 brought him an annuity of £105 and a sense of recognition. In 1830 he joined the controversy that had arisen around the issue of Catholic Emancipation by writing his last prose work, On the Constitution of the Church and State. The third edition of Coleridge’s Poetical Works appeared in time for him to see it before his final illness and death in 1834. Evaluation Coleridge’s achievement has been given more widely varying assessments than that of any other English literary artist, though there is broad agreement that his enormous potential was never fully realized in his works.

His stature as a poet has never been in doubt; in “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” he wrote two of the greatest poems in English literature and perfected a mode of sensuous lyricism that is often echoed by later poets. But he also has a reputation as one of the most important of all English literary critics, largely on the basis of his Biographia Literaria. In Coleridge’s view, the essential element of literature was a union of emotion and thought that he described as imagination. He especially stressed poetry’s capacity for integrating the universal and the particular, the objective and the subjective, the generic and the individual. The function of criticism for Coleridge was to discern these elements and to lift them into conscious awareness, rather than merely to prescribe or to describe rules or forms. In all his roles, as poet, social critic, literary critic, theologian, and psychologist, Coleridge expressed a profound concern with elucidating an underlying creative principle that is fundamental to both human beings and the universe as a whole.

To Coleridge, imagination is the archetype of this unifying force because it represents the means by which the twin human capacities for intuitive, non-rational understanding and for organizing and discriminating thought concerning the material world are reconciled . It was by means of this sort of reconciliation of opposites that Coleridge attempted, with considerable success, to combine a sense of the universal and ideal with an acute observation of the particular and sensory in his own poetry and in his criticism. Thomas De Quincey ’s biography on Samuel Taylor Coleridge appeared in the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (see the Britannica Classic: Samuel Taylor Coleridge). More about Samuel Taylor Coleridge 34 References found in Britannica Articles Assorted References Kubla Khan Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Poem Hunter Kubla Khan Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Poem Hunter Kubla Khan - Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 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.

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, 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 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 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 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 !

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, 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, 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, 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 ! 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. (1/9/2017 3:00:00 PM) tom allport a poem full of adventurous lines that is meant to continue on in many adventurous minds? truly fabulous writing.

(Report) Reply (9/25/2016 5:59:00 AM) 'Kubla khan' is a great poem. In the introduction of The Lyrical Ballads (1798) , Wordsworth and Coleridge professed their points of view regarding the nature of lyric poetry and their own practical principle to be employed in their poems. Wordsworth concerned himself with nature and human nature and Coleridge often wrote dream poems under the influence of opium and the poems also appeared to be fragmentary. Among the marvellous creations - The Rime of the ancient Mariner, Christabel (in two parts) , Kubla Khan are remarkable. Coleridge is an adept master in the realm of supernatural poetry and he is indebted to Spencer and medieval metrical romance. Kubla Khan, a vision in a dream is a fragmentary dream poem. It is about poetry and poetic inspiration. It is the most imaginative of Coleridge's poems. Swinburne observes, Every line of the poem might be subjected to the like scrutiny but the student would be none nearest to the master's secret.

The spirit, the odour in it, the cloven tongue of fire that rests upon its forehead, is a thing neither explicable nor communicable. Kubla Khan is about two kinds of poetry. The first 36 lines are about naturalness, palpability and matter of factness of poetry. The second part of the poem is essentially concerned with divine inspiration. The last part is also on the theory of poetic inspiration and creativity. The first part is concerned with the relation of man to nature. The second part is related to divine aspect of poetry. Herein lies the organic relations between the two parts. Kubla Khan is indeed a forerunner of modern poetry. There is a chain of ambiguous and paradoxical aspects of poetry and philosophy. Its fragmentary nature indicates its modernity. It is, in its depth, a definite comment on the modern world and its separation of head and heart, action and contemplation. Symbolism is the main criterion of Coleridge's poetical craftsmanship. G. Wilson Knight, in his illuminating article, Coleridge's Divine Comedy, has analysed the symbolism of the poem.

Kubla Khan, the great oriental king once ordered that a magnificent pleasure dome be built for him in Xanadu as his summer capital. The sacred river, Alph winding its course through immeasurably deep caves ultimately to sink into a dark subterranean sea. A fertile tract of land, about ten square miles in area was enclosed with walls and towers. There are bright gardens and ancient forests forming a vast green spot. Next the poet describes the source of the river, Alph. There was a deep, mysterious and fearsome chasm that slanted down a green hill. There are many cedar trees. It was a savage, holy and enchanted place, frequented by a woman desperately wandering about under a waning moon in search of her demon lover. A mighty fountain burst forth from this chasm intermittently. Huge rocks are bursting out of it with the sound of hail storm. The noise is tremendous. The Alph comes out of this fountain and flows for five miles through woods and valleys. Then it sinks into the sunless sea with a loud noise. In the midst of this noise, Kubla Khan could hear the ancestral voices predicting a war. The pleasure - dome was a sunny dome.

It's shadow fell midway on the river. While standing here, one could hear the mingled noises from the fountain and the caves. In the second part of the poem, the poet gives a picture of a poet caught in poetic frenzy. Here Coleridge is dealing with the theory of poetic inspiration. In one vision, he saw an Abyssinian maid playing on her dulcimer and singing of the wild splendour of Mount Abora. The pleasure dome for the poet is a miracle of art because it includes 'sunny-dome' and 'caves of ice' - life and death. Coleridge's concept of poetic frenzy is akin to Shakespearean vision. Humphrey House considers the poem a poetic creation about the ecstasy in imaginative fulfilment. The main metaphorical meaning of the poem is hidden in the concluding part. There is no doubt that Kubla Khan is basically a critical commentary on Plato's theory of poetry. There is the concept of madness in Plato's The Ion and Phaedrus again Shakespeare equates the poet, lover and the lunatic in the same category in A Mid Summer Night's Dream.

The 'flashing eyes' and 'floating hair' of Coleridge's poem belong to a poet in the fury of creation. So there are verbal resemblances in the versions of Plato, Shakespeare and Coleridge. Socretes in his Ion compares lyric poets to 'Bacchie maidens who drew milk and honey from the rivers'. They acted under the influence of Dionysus. In the final section, the poet speaks of a strange vision of an Abyssinian maid playing on her dulcimer and singing of the wild splendour of Mount Abora. The poet is caught in a mood of poetic frenzy with a paradise vision. The readers of inspiratory poetry will go round the poet three times to protect themselves from his magical frenzy. They will experience a kind of fear as one feels in the presence of God. It is holy fear because thought the poet is a magician, there is nothing evil about his magic. The poet seems to be fed and nourished on honey dew falling from the heaven. He drinks nectar, a sort of magical drink which produces divine inspiration in the form of melodious hymn.

(Report) Reply Susan Williams (3/8/2016 3:15:00 PM) Coleridge finds a lot of his dramatic material for his poetry in nature. He sees POWER in the workings of nature. He's totally captivated by that power. He wants to duplicate the lightning strike, the intense winds that blow roofs off of houses, the formation of ice, the rampaging waters of a river in flood stage. He doesn't want to just duplicate them, he wants his poetry to be them. That is typical opium using Coleridge for you. That's why his poems are so intense, emotional and rooted in the natural world. They definitely are not polite, quiet, regular type poems. Nope. He's wanting to create a riot of emotions instead of restraining it. Kubla Khan is probably the most intense, emotional, strange, power-ridden poem you'll ever read. Bringing all that raging power of nature into this is his not very subtle way to get you to think about love, death, the soul, and strange magnetic men called Kubla Khan.

(Report) Reply Savita Tyagi (3/8/2016 6:47:00 AM) I read this poem many times and always wondered why Coldridge named it Kubla Khan. There may be many analysts for it but to me the name itself depicts the drama of life. A warrior's life is made up of war and destruction but there must be time for their softer emotions when they try to take care of this earth and admire all it's beauty. Replica of which they try to create. This contrast of emotions crafted so skillfully in the images of this poem. Just a fantastic poem to read and read again. (Report) Reply Suresh Mohamed (12/22/2015 12:11:00 PM) An Anecdote goes, when Coleridge was writing Kubla Khan seated in his garden one day, he was experiencing the Muse on full flame, a marvellous training of thought was flowing, which Coleridge was so excitedly trying to note down, but hear a sudden thud on his garden gate and he walked up to find a certain Porlock was asking for direction.

After assisting him, he sat down again, but he could not recall that train of thought, however hard he tried. Had Mr. Porlock did not disturb Coleridge, we might have gotten a better version of Kubla khan. Damn you, porlock! (Report) Reply (11/9/2014 11:16:00 PM) this is the poem that i was asked to review in my poetry exam! ah (Report) Reply Terry Craddock (11/9/2014 7:59:00 PM) This poem still intrigues with the siren call of an incredibly powerful opium dream, I have loved these lines for decades and still long for the missing lines left unwritten by an ill timed strangers knock upon the door. (Report) Reply (11/9/2014 8:10:00 AM) A beautiful poem and it is more meaningful with reference to historical event.I liked it.

(Report) Reply Frank Avon (11/9/2014 3:49:00 AM) If I had to choose THE best poem in the English language (and what a difficult task that would be!) , I would choose this one. I had to grow into it, however; at one time I thought it was very nearly a nonsense poem, crazy like a dream. But over the years, it has become more and more meaningful. It deals conclusively with Coleridge's favorite theme: the Imagination, its working and its importance. Its subtlety and yet its accessibility, its intricate form and yet is quotability and simple syntax, its two dramatic parts which at first seem almost unrelated yet turn out to be complementary and perfectly unified - all of these aspects of the poem contribute to its overall quality. And, by the way, don't believe a word of Coleridge's excuse that it is incomplete. It is, indeed, complete and perfectly unified.

It's readable and pleasurable without consulting any secondary sources, but if you want to know the sources of some of Coleridge's imagery and get a sense of what these images might have meant to him personally, consult John Livingstone Loewe's 'Road to Xanadu.' Also read the passage in the 'Biographia Literaria' which has to do with C's view of the 'commanding genius' and the creative (or imaginative) genius. Kublai Khan, of course, is the archetype of the 'commanding genius, ' one who hopes to create (or restore) an Eden, or Paradise on earth; the 'I' of the second part has the prospect of representing the creative (or imaginative) genius. The 'damsel w/ the dulcimer' is, as it were, his Muse, or his imaginative mind. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, 'I' would build the Eden that Kublai Khan envisioned, but without its flaw ('that deep romantic chasm, ' 'a savage place') and without its being subject to the ravages of time ('Ancestral voices prophesying war') .

With 'music loud and long, ' or with poetry or one of the other arts, he would call forth 'that dome in air, / That sunny dome') . Of course, the general public is always suspicious of the creative genius, rejecting him/her and attempting to restore common-sense order of things: For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. But even in their plaint they indirectly point to the success of his mission: the milk and honey of the Promised Land, the Paradise (the closing word of this complete, carefully crafted, imaginatively engrossing work of art) . (Report) Reply Aftab Alam Khursheed (11/9/2014 3:11:00 AM) This poem is dream of STC yet Kubla Khan the Mongol Ruler established his kingdom in China..words are dreaming words very interesting this poem unlike Ancient Mariner very tough in its code AM is about the French Revolution and this is...

lovely and famous poem of STC (Report) Reply Kevin Patrick (11/9/2012 10:54:00 PM) years ago I had a collection of romantic and victorian poetry this poem was in it, when I read it I could not help but think how similar it was to the lyrics to the RUSH song of the same name, and then I realized Neal Peart stolle it almost verbatum from this. Well he stole a masterful poem and turned it into a well crafted song. But Rime of the ancient Mariner is still the best work Coleridge EVER wrote (Report) Reply

Question: Which British poet wrote ‘Kubla Khan’?
Answer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge