The speaker of the poem “Kubla Kahn” tells of how a man named Kubla Khan went on an exploration to the land of Xanadu. In Xanadu the man named Kubla, found a fascinating pleasure-dome that was as he says “a miracle of rare device” because the dome was made up of caves of ice and was found in a sunny area. The speaker describes the contrasting composition of Xanadu. While there are gardens blossoming with incense-bearing trees and “sunny spots of greenery,” across the “deep romantic chasm” in Xanadu there are “caverns measureless to man” and a fountain from which “huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail.” Amid this hostile atmosphere of Nature, Kubla also hears “ancestral voices prophesying war.” However, Kubla finds relief from this tumultuous atmosphere through his discovery of the miraculous sunny pleasure-dome made of ice. The speaker Intel’s that there is much beauty on the land but also a surprisingly amount of darkness because of its history.
Throughout the first stanza the speaker is describing the setting and all its features in a detailed manner. Through these detailed descriptions, the speaker describes a setting filled with beauty that man cannot be measured by man. It is a land that through its beauty and history, brings pleasure to the speaker, and takes him back to reminisce on it. On one end the land is filled with beauty while on the other end the speaker describes a sanctuary of waning voices from ancestors of a savage era in time. Although the beauty of the land brings pleasure to the speaker, its history also brings dark memories reflecting off times of war. Xanadu, is one land composed of two separate background settings that are connected by flowing river. In the finalizing stanza, the speaker explains that through music and his words he could revive the beauty and the
