Xanadu
I’ve had a poem stuck in my head of late: Samuel Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” with its evocative opening 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. The poet claimed to have dreamt it all up in an opium-induced slumber, after having read a description of Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol Emperor of China. Upon waking, he sought to commit his vision to paper. Alas, an unexpected interruption derailed his train of thought, such that he could not recall the bulk of it once he had returned—or so he claimed. The resultant incomplete fragment he shared privately with friends for nearly 20 years, before eventually publishing it in 1816. I won’t reproduce it here in its entirety, when it’s easy enough to find online [ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/kubla-khan ]. Suffice to say that “Kubla Khan” consists of three stanzas. The first describes Xanadu, with its fortified...