Kubla Khan

About “Kubla Khan”

Kubla Khan: or A Vision in a Dream is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797 and published in 1816. It is also known by the subtitles "A Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." Coleridge wrote the poem after experiencing an opium-influenced dream following the reading of a description of Xanadu, the summer capital of the Yuan dynasty. He wrote the lines he remembered from the dream until he was interrupted by a visitor from Porlock. This interruption prevented him from completing the poem as originally planned, and he left it unpublished for years. It was finally published in 1816, at the suggestion of Lord Byron. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)