Role of Imagination Presented in “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In the third stanza the memory string gets broken and poetic speaker moves on to tell about another dream about “an Abyssinian maid” who played on her dulcimer. In the stanza he states that if only he could remember the song of the maid, he would rebuild the dome. At the very end the poem gets a strange twist because the poetic speaker gives a warning to those who have heard the music of the maid, saying that they need to be aware of a man with “His flashing eyes, his floating hair!” who has eaten the food of Paradise and gives an instruction on how to carry a ritual. This could mean that the poet becomes not the master of his imagination but a slave of his imagination. He went from telling a story about a beautiful place with a stunning river to a strange story of a man from whom people should be afraid of, thus making himself afraid as well.…