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The Pleasure-Dome

The most famous image from Coleridge’s poem is the “stately pleasure-dome” (line 2) mentioned in the in opening lines. The importance of this image can be understood solely from the fact that the speaker mentions it five times. After referencing the pleasure-dome in the first two lines, the speaker widens their perspective to the broader landscape surrounding Xanadu. In the second stanza, they describe how a sacred river flows through that landscape, tracing a path down a hill to “a lifeless ocean” (line 28), into which the river empties. It is there that the pleasure-dome is situated, uncannily floating among the waves (lines 31–36):

   The shadow of the dome of pleasure
   Floated midway on the waves;
   Where was heard the mingled measure
   From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

So entranced is the speaker with this “miracle of rare device” that they imagine reconstructing the dream vision in the waking world. As long as they can hold on to the image, the speaker insists, “I would build that dome in air, / That sunny dome!” (lines 46–47). In this way, the pleasure-dome bridges fantasy and real life. The dream image, though apparently outlandish, provides the speaker with a vision they wish to realize in their everyday life. Significantly, this is precisely what poetry does—that is, it provides an aspirational and perhaps even prophetic vision. The fact that a poem is also a self-contained work that affords the reader pleasure also suggests its symbolic connection to the pleasure-dome.

The River Alph

In the poem’s opening stanza, the speaker mentions a river called Alph, which wends its way through Xanadu (lines 3–5):

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
   Down to a sunless sea.

As “the sacred river,” Alph represents the spiritual center of the lush landscape that surrounds Xanadu. The importance of this river is such that the speaker ends up describing it twice. After introducing it in the lines quoted above, the speaker returns in the second stanza with a lengthier description of the river’s path from a “chasm” (line 12) and down a hill to some “caverns” (27) situated near “a lifeless ocean” (28). In addition to having an outsized presence in the poem, Coleridge emphasizes the river’s symbolic significance through its name—alph being very close to alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet. Generally, then, the name signifies beginnings or origins. The name also alludes specifically to the biblical passage in Revelations 22:13, where God declares, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” Thus, the river takes on an even more forceful theological significance. Yet it’s also important to note that, though Xanadu is a real place, the River Alph is fictional. As the product of the poet’s mind, then, the river also symbolizes the quasi-divine power of the imagination.

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