Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Essay

As she passes the ruins she recreates the pleasant things that had been there. Despite the reasonable arguments that her goods belonged to God and whatever God does is just, there is in the poem an undercurrent of regret that the loss is not fully compensated for by the hope of the treasure that lies above. (84)

“And all with pearl and ruby glowing/ Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing/And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty/was but to sing.” This is an important passage that fully details that the palace is his mind and the “Troop of Echoes” whom sing are his thoughts, which came like a constant river. He then praises the “Voices of surpassing beauty” the great thoughts that always came to their creator’s aid.

The first literary device that expresses the theme that Kabul is beautiful is personification. Throughout the poem Kabul is addressed as a female and given female characteristics. In line one in the poem Tabrizi states, “The beautiful city of Kabul wears a rugged mountain skirt”(Line one). In fact, Kabul is simply surrounded by mountains. The use of personification allows the reader to see Kabul as a woman wearing a skirt, many would agree that saying that Kabul is beautiful and wears a skirt seems more appealing than saying Kabul is surrounded by mountains. The use of this example of personification gives the attributes of feminine beauty to a region of land to express just how beautiful it truly is. Another example of personification is found in stanza six, line 2. This line reads “Even the Tuba of Paradise is jealous of their greenery” (Line 22). The Tuba Of Paradise is heaven in the Islamic faith and it is saying heaven is jealous of the greenery of the gardens in Kabul. By saying that a heavenly place is jealous of the appearance of an place on earth, one gets the impression that Kabul must be very

The image that is firstly drawn in the first stanza is that of a blade of grass amid a field and the

In the poem, the contrast of hard negative connotations and soft sensitive words indicates his purpose of writing. Examples of soft words are “gently its touch, rouse, kind old sun, whispering, full-nerved, still warm” Examples of hard words are “snow, clays of a cold star, clay grew tall, fatuous sunbeams, break earth’s sleep at all”. The word clay reminds us that we came from clay and we return to dust. The choice of cold star probably refers to earth before it was inhabited which was also expressed in the bible “thou hast made me of clay and wilt thou bring me unto dust again”. The word fatuous shows the anger and frustration of the writer. Whispering has the feeling of anxiety and dread. The last line is an old existential question of “why are we here?” With the use of sound effects, themes, technique and language, the poem clearly shows the genuine emotions of empathy, waste and the futility of

There are no marble arches and no lighthouses. The river has dried up with the memory of the empire and the bones of a dead leader have long since turned to dust. Colossal galleons and crowds to greet victorious soldiers are no longer even a memory in the minds of those alive today, simply words on paper in books gathering dust in the darkest corner of a room. There is no-one to remember the beauty of the vast city; no-one to describe the sight of the lighthouses and no-one to recall the crisp aroma of the once majestic river. All that remains are the few paintings and statues that did not dissolve with time. The dust of the bones of men, women and children long since dead has faded from existence. There is no-one left to remember the man selling wares in the street or the woman grieving over the soldier she loved. Nobody holds the memory of the child playing in the park or the servant bringing a pitcher of water to his master. The meaning behind the statue has faded from everyone’s mind. The man, whose wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command secured his victory in every battle he fought, has dissolved into nothing more than a story in a book.

The Mongols, which were one of the greatest empires of their time, had unique traits which made them successful. They are vastly known for their military tactics, that led them to prosper. Wrapped up in a single word the Mongols were unstoppable. These remarkable people left an imprint on history to show it is possible to rise above even the harshest conditions. The Mongolian empire was successful due to their vast understanding of how to conquer an empire, dealing with environmental setbacks, and makeshift technology.

At the end of chapter 20 in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, Coleridge describes his own experience with poetry and its effect on others’ imagination from an outsiders point of view:

Because the poem is long, it won’t be quoted extensively here, but it is attached at the end of the paper for ease of reference. Instead, the paper will analyze the poetic elements in the work, stanza by stanza. First, because the poem is being read on-line, it’s not possible to say for certain that each stanza is a particular number of lines long. Each of several versions looks different on the screen; that is, there is no pattern to the number of lines in each stanza. However, the stanzas are more like paragraphs in a letter than

The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian epic poem with no known author, is the story of the brute King of Uruk, Gilgamesh, who was two-thirds divine and one-third human, which teaches readers the unstoppable force of death, the wrath of the gods, and also the power of friendship, which are illustrated to readers through the characters journeys, and those encountered along the way. The poem, which is divided into twelve tablets, starts off with Gilgamesh being a vicious tyrant, one who “would leave no son to his father… no girl to her mother”(Gilgamesh 101), and as for newly married couples “was to join with the girl that night”(Gilgamesh 109) transitions to by the end of the story an entirely new man.

Such a situation warrants Coleridge the title of visionary, and therefore his poem becomes a vision: a Romantically textual utopia whose realisation was challenged by the rational status quo of its historical origin. Due to this, Coleridge’s work will always seek practical affirmation and will therefore constantly be the source of metaphysically-oriented debate, leaving the dualism that rules it to be decided by the reader and the ideologies he or she brings to the text. This conclusion is supported by the words of John Beer:

There are a myriad of critical theory lenses that can be applied and utilized to closely observe pieces of literature. One of these theories is John Keats’s Negative Capability theory which consists of an idea of “…when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason…” (Keats 968). Ultimately, this signifies that in poetry the emphasis be placed on the significance of inquisitiveness and the asking of questions of the life and scenery around one’s self, rather than placing emphasis on strongly searching for these answers. This theory can be applied to a multitude of works, but for these sakes and purposes what will be critiqued is Samuel Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. In a subtle

The following report will discuss the leadership qualities of Borjigin Temüjin and the organizational culture of his people, the Mongols. Readers might be confused on who Borjigin Temüjin is, he was the man known today as Genghis Khan. This paper will illustrate how Temüjin’s ability to lead developed by exploring his beginnings and how through his exceptional leadership skills he went on to create the largest contiguous empire in history. The first part of the paper will concentrate on Mongol culture in the 12th century, Temüjin’s upbringing in that culture and how he changed it through the consolidation of the many Mongol tribes. The second part will discuss the rise of Borjigin Temüjin to the post of Genghis Khan and

Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” is a bright example of the transforming power imagination has. The poet’s usage of diction and allegories transform this poem into a symbol for imagination. It is said that it was written after Coleridge’s encounter with the sublime while still being under the effect of opium, and when he went to record it, he was disrupted by a visitor and the remaining of the poem was lost even to him. In the poem he shows how possibilities are limitless as long as our imaginations are; Coleridge uses “caverns measureless to man” as a

Although there is no consistent syntax, rhyme, or meter in Kubla Khan, the poem begins its journey through the mind in a conscious and calculating manner. The first four lines of the poem, in fact, appear to almost directly derive from a passage of Purchas’s Pilgrimage, as the narrative voice slowly drifts into a dreamlike state. Coleridge’s paraphrasing of a relatively accessible, published piece of literature seems to provide the narrator with a solid foundation to build his seemingly inaccessible poem upon.