Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He claimed that it was written in the Autumn of 1797 at a farmhouse near Exmoor, but it may have been composed on one of a number of other visits to the farm. It may also have been revised a number of times before it was first published in 1816. Its composition was famously interrupted by the man from Porlock. Some have speculated that the vivid imagery of the poem stems from an opium-induced hallucination.

The full text is reproduced here, along with the famous note with which it was accompanied when first published, as well as a marginal note on an original manuscript copy in Coleridge's own hand, and a quote from William Bartram which is believed to have been a source of the poem.