塞缪尔·泰勒·柯勒律治（Samuel Taylor Coleridge）说，他在1797年秋天写了《忽必烈汗》，但直到1816年他读给乔治·戈登（George Gordon）和拜伦勋爵（Lord Byron），拜伦坚持要立即出版，这本书才出版。这是一首有力的、传奇的、神秘的诗，是在一个鸦片梦中创作的，诚然是一个片段。在与这首诗一起出版的序言中，柯勒律治声称，他在幻想中写了几百行，但醒来时无法写完这...
塞缪尔·泰勒·柯勒律治（Samuel Taylor Coleridge）说，他在1797年秋天写了《忽必烈汗》，但直到1816年他读给乔治·戈登（George Gordon）和拜伦勋爵（Lord Byron），拜伦坚持要立即出版，这本书才出版。这是一首有力的、传奇的、神秘的诗，是在一个鸦片梦中创作的，诚然是一个片段。在与这首诗一起出版的序言中，柯勒律治声称，他在幻想中写了几百行，但醒来时无法写完这首诗，因为他疯狂的写作被打断了：
The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], and, as far as the Author’s own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits. In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in
Purchas’s Pilgrimage : “Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.” The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter! Then all the charm Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shape the other. Stay awile, Poor youth! who scarcely dar’st lift up thine eyes-- The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon The visions will return! And lo, he stays, And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms Come trembling back, unite, and now once more The pool becomes a mirror. Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him: but the to-morrow is yet to come.
《忽必烈汗》以残缺著称，因此不能说它是一首严格的正式诗歌，但它的节奏运用和结尾韵的回响非常娴熟，而这些诗歌手法在很大程度上与它对读者想象力的强大控制有关。它的韵律是一系列的抑扬格，有时是四米（一行四英尺，达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达-达。行尾韵无处不在，不是以简单的模式，而是以一种建立在诗的高潮（并使大声朗读非常有趣）的方式相互关联。押韵方案可总结如下：
A B A A B C C D B D B E F E E F G G H H I I J J K A A K L L M N M N O O P Q R R Q B S B S T O T T T O U U O（这个方案中的每一行代表一个诗节。请注意，我没有遵循通常的习惯，在每一个新诗节的开头都用“A”作为押韵音，因为我想让大家知道柯勒律治是如何在后面的一些诗节中使用早期的押韵的——例如，第二节中的“A”和“B”（这是第四节。）
“忽必烈汗”是一首显然是要说出来的诗。许多早期的读者和评论家发现这首诗简直难以理解，以至于人们普遍认为这首诗是“由声音而非感觉组成的”。它的声音是美丽的，任何大声朗读的人都会明白这一点。
然而，这首诗并非毫无意义。它始于柯勒律治阅读塞缪尔·珀查斯（Samuel Purchas）的17世纪游记《珀查斯的朝圣之旅》（Purchas High Pilgrary）或《世界与宗教的关系》（the Relations of the World and Relations and the Relations of the Relations and the Relations of the Relations of the Relations and the Relations of the Relations of the Inspected。第一节描述了忽必烈在上都（或商都）修建的颐和园，忽必烈是蒙古武士成吉思汗的孙子，也是13世纪中国皇帝元朝的创始人：
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree
1275年，马可波罗访问了位于内蒙古北京北部的世外桃源，在他讲述了自己前往忽必烈王朝的经历后，“世外桃源”一词成为外国富裕和辉煌的同义词。
除了柯勒律治所描述的地方的神秘性质之外，这首诗的下一行还将上都命名为这个地方
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man
这可能是指2世纪地理学家波萨尼亚斯在《希腊描述》中对阿尔卑斯河的描述（托马斯·泰勒1794年的译文在柯勒律治图书馆）。根据Pausanias的说法，河流上升到水面，然后再次下降到地球上，在喷泉的其他地方出现，这显然是诗第二节中图像的来源：
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river.
但是，第一节的诗行是有韵律的、平静的（在声音和意义上），第二节是激动的、极端的，就像岩石和圣河的运动一样，在这一节的开头和结尾都带有感叹号的紧迫性：
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
在第三节中，幻想的描述变得更加如此：
It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
然后第四节突然转向，介绍了叙述者的“我”，从对世外桃源宫殿的描述转向叙述者看到的其他东西：
A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora.
一些评论家认为，Abora山是Coleridge对Amara山的称呼，这座山是约翰·米尔顿在《埃塞俄比亚尼罗河源头的失乐园》（阿比西尼亚）中描述的——这里是非洲的自然天堂，紧挨着忽必烈在上都创造的天堂。
在这一点上，“忽必烈汗”是所有华丽的描述和典故，但当诗人在最后一节中“我”一词的诗中真正表现自己时，他很快就从描述他视野中的对象转向描述他自己的诗歌努力：
Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
这一定是柯勒律治写作被打断的地方；当他回来写这些诗句时，这首诗原来是关于它自己的，关于不可能体现他幻想的愿景。这首诗变成了欢乐穹顶，诗人被认为是忽必烈汗，他们都是世外桃源的创造者，柯勒律治在诗的最后几行中模仿了诗人和汗：
And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
“...what he calls a vision, Kubla Khan--which said vision he repeats so enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and Elysian bowers into my parlour.” --from an 1816 letter to William Wordsworth, in The Letters of Charles Lamb (Macmillan, 1888) Samuel Taylor Coleridge writing this poem “The first dream added a palace to reality; the second, which occurred five centuries later, a poem (or the beginning of a poem) suggested by the palace. The similarity of the dreams hints of a plan.... In 1691 Father Gerbillon of the Society of Jesus confirmed that ruins were all that was left of the palace of Kubla Khan; we know that scarcely fifty lines of the poem were salvaged. These facts give rise to the conjecture that this series of dreams and labors has not yet ended. The first dreamer was given the vision of the palace, and he built it; the second, who did not know of the other’s dream, was given the poem about the palace. If the plan does not fail, some reader of ‘Kubla Khan’ will dream, on a night centuries removed from us, of marble or of music. This man will not know that two others also dreamed. Perhaps the series of dreams has no end, or perhaps the last one who dreams will have the key....” --from “The Dream of Coleridge” in Other Inquisitions, 1937-1952 by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Ruth Simms (University of Texas Press, 1964, reprint forthcoming November 2007)
