1. Who was Kubla Khan? How was ‘Kubla Khan’ composed?

Answer: Kubla Khan, a historical figure, was the grandson of Genghis Khan (1162 - 1227) and the
founder of the Mongolian Empire. He was also a great conqueror who completed the subjugation of
China. In the introductory note to the poem, Coleridge described how he had been taking opium,
and fallen asleep when he reading a sentence from a travel book, “Purchas Pilgrimage”, concerning
Kubla’s palace and the wall around its gardens. Here Kubla Khan commanded to build a palace and a
safety garden there unto and thus 10 miles of fertile ground were enclosed with a wall.

2. What is ‘Xanadu’?

Answer: ‘Xanadu’ was the summer capital of Kubla Khan. The name ‘Xanadu’ is taken from one of
the passages in ‘Purchase Pilgrimage’ the story of which inspired the poem: In Xanadu, Kubla Khan
built a stately palace. Xanadu also gives us a sense of remoteness in space and time as remoteness is
the essence of romance and it helps in making the supernatural elements of the poem more
convincing.

3. “Singing on Mount Abora” – Explain the reference to “Mount Abora"

Answer: ‘Mounot Abora' the imaginary name of a mountain, combines that of the river , Abora, a
tributary of the Nile with Mt. Amara is a real mountain which is mentioned in two of Coleridge’s
sources, “Pilgrimage” by Samuel Purchas and Milton's description of paradise in “Paradise Lost”.

4. Bring out the touch of supernaturalism in the poem, Kubla Khan.

Answer: The unique mark of Coleridge’s artistry raises the poem from the region of everyday realities
to that of a supernatural world; The very mountain of ‘Xanadu’, ‘Alph', ‘Abora’ and the ‘Abyssinian
maid’ evoke associations of remoteness mystery and strangeness.

The woman waiting for the demon-lover, the chasm ‘seeing with ceaseless turmoil’, ‘the earth
breathing in thick pants’, the huge fragments thrown up by the waves, ‘the caverns measure to man’,
‘the poet with his flashing eyes’, ‘his floating hairs fade on honey do a governs method to men’,’ the
plate with his flashing eyes’, ‘his floating hairs fade on honey dew’ and ‘milk of paradise’- all these
are touches which make the poem a supernatural world.

5. “It was miracle of rare device/ A sunny pleasure-dome – ice!” - Elucidate.

Answer: The ‘pleasure dome’ was built somewhere midway between the fountain and the
immeasurably deep caves. The palace has marvelous architecture skill. It stood bath in the sunlight
and on all sides of it was ice. Their edifice was created in an ice-bound region.

In these lines, the image drawn by the poet, Coleridge is an absolute miracle because of nature's two
opposing forces - the heat of the sun and the ice - perfect balance and harmony. Coleridge may be
referring to his theory that poetic imagination requires a balance between opposing forces.

6. Is Kubla Khan an extraction of a poem or a poetic oeuvre?

Answer: The structure of the poem, Kubla Khan is really divided into two parts. The first, which
consists of three stanzas, describes Xanadu as if Coleridge was actually feeling the place first hand.
The second part of the poem is filled with the desire to stay in Xanadu, but Coleridge is unable to
capture that experience again.
The two parts may initially seem unconnected but the ideas in both parts of the poem link this
section together by showing that even the ruler cannot have control over the forces of nature and
the writer over his imagination.

Both parts of the poem deal with the attempt to create a sense that Kubla Khan has built a pleasure
dome and Coleridge is trying to use his language to create the perfection of his dream with words.

7. Bring out the symbolism of Kubla Khan?

Answer: Symbolism is the cheap criterion of the poetic craftsmanship of Kubla Khan. There is a
sacred river that runs into ‘caverns measureless’ to man and ‘sunless sea'.

That is the river runs into ‘Infinity of death’ symbolizing ‘life the ceaseless turmoil’ the fountain
forced out with ‘half intermitted burst' ‘the chaffy grain beneath the flail’ suggest the dynamic
engineering of birth and creation.

A waving moon and a woman waiting for her demon lover might have suggested the Mystic glamour
of sex. The ‘measureless to man' might suggest infinity and nothingness. The ancestral voice suggests
the dark compulsion that birds the race to its habitual conflicts.

8. What is the importance of ‘decree’?

Do you think the ‘pleasure-dome’ was ever built or only decreed?

Answer: The importance of the word ‘decree’ is order and power of Kubla Khan. So, it proves that his
ordered was obeyed. In the land of Xanadu, the ‘pleasure dome’ was built by the ‘decree’ of Kubla
Khan.

9. What does the vision of the ‘damsel with dulcimer’ represent to the poet?

Answer: The ‘damsel with dulcimer’ represents some kind of perfect harmony of sight and sound to
the poet. The speaker said he once saw "a damsel (girl) with a dulcimer", an Abyssinian maid who
played her dulcimer and sang "Mount Abora". He says that if he can revive "his symphony and song"
in him, he will rebuild the ‘pleasure-dome’ of music and that those who have heard him will be
careful.

10. How does Coleridge draw visual pictures through his poem, Kubla Khan?

Answer: Coleridge has presented the visual symbols of which the readers can visualize when they
read the poem.

In this poem, the ideas of perfection and the different places drawn in in the poem have much
importance. The imaginary portrayal brings out some of the opposite ideas in the poem like
‘fountain’, ‘sunless seas’, ‘caverns’, ‘artificial caves’, ‘sunny spots of greenery’, ‘savage place’ etc.

11. Are the ‘pleasure dome’ and the ‘vision of the damsel’ similar?

Answer: The ‘pleasure-dome’ of the poem is a kind of perfection of the both ‘holy’ and ‘enchanted’
which means ‘savage place’ and ‘the deep romantic chasm’ as it is the vision of ‘damsel with a
dulcimer’. The poet too would become ‘holy and enchanted’ himself the ‘sympathy and song of the
vision’.

12. Contrast the positive aspects of the vision with any negative aspects
Contrast the positive aspects of the vision with any negative aspects you have found in the
poem, Kubla Khan. Is the poem a positive celebration of the vision or does it express more regrets
at its transitory nature?

Answer: Directly there are not any negative words but there are limitations of the vision because it is
a matter of self-contained area. The vision of the ‘damsel’ too is circumscribed by its transitoriness as
the ‘pleasure-dome’ was by its topography. Both are an idealized portrayal as Brooke's ‘fishy heaven’.

Q. Discuss the psychological realism behind Coleridge’s use of the supernatural with reference
to Kubla Khan

Answer: Kubla Khan is a dream vision, a poem of pure magic. It exemplifies Coleridge’s mastery over
supernatural poetry. Coleridge creates an environment of mystery in Kubla Khan mainly by describing
the ‘pleasure- dome’ and therefore the surroundings in which it stood. It is a beautiful place where
the river Alph flows “through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.” The immeasurable
caverns and the sunless sea, perhaps some dark subterranean lake, evoke in our mind a sense of
mystery and awe.

There is the deep romantic chasm which lay across forest of cedar trees. From this gorge is
momentously forced a mighty fountain, the source of river Alph. The manner, in which the water is
described as intermittently thereby forcing its way out from the spring and throwing up huge pieces
of rock, fascinates the reader.

The atmosphere is mostly mystery and awe. There is the deep romantic chasm which lay across
forest of cedar trees. From this gorge is momentously forced a mighty fountain, the source of river
Alph. The manner is which the water is described as intermittently forcing its way out from the
spring, throwing up huge pieces of rock, fascinates the reader. The atmosphere of mystery and awe is
emphasized when another reference is formed to the sunless sea or the lifeless ocean into which the
waters of Alph fell with a loud roar.

Suggestiveness is the basic feature of Coleridge’s supernaturalism. It is true that a vivid and graphic
description of the environment of the pleasure- dome is conceding the poem but the supernatural
element is suggestive. Coleridge is a superb artist for intermingling the natural and the supernatural
so that the probable and the improbable interfuse. Here are lines which for sheer suggestiveness and
mystery are perhaps unsurpassed:

A savage place! As hole and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon –lover.

A complete store of love’s tragedy is hidden in these lines. It is a story comparable to Keat’s La Belle
Dame sans merci. And then the following two lines;

And’ mid this tumult Kubla heard from for

Ancestral voices prophesying war !

The mystery and awe of these lines are striking. What war and why it is left to our imagination.

Then we come to the closing lines which contain a picture of poetic frenzy. Here too we have an
outstanding blending of the natural and supernatural. A poet’s inspiration is a well-known and
natural fact of human experience, but there is something supernatural about the way in which this
poetic inspiration and the creative powers of a poet are shown:

And’ all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with thrice,

For he on honey- dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of paradise

But despite the mystery and awe evoked in the poem, the whole description is psychologically
accurate because when the poet is in a state of frenzy, he is really like a magician. Out of this creative
madness, come the game of truth and beauty. Touches of realism are added, even to the description
of the chasm and the mighty fountain.

Coleridge uses the similes rebounding hail and chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail which are
familiar to our lives are most natural. If Kubla Khan hears prophesies of war altogether the
tumultuous noise, it is not unrealistic. It is true to human experience. After all he is a brave warrior.

Coleridge never forgets that his real purpose is to make the supernatural natural and to bring about
the “willing suspension of disbelief which constitutes poetic faith”. Whether Kubla Khan is seen as a
poem about poetic creativity or about life, it is a convincing work.

'Ode to Autumn' by John Keats

1. What is an Ode?

Answer: An Ode is a lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment an elevated in style. (The
word is simply the Greek for ‘song’ and was applied by the Greeks to any kind of poetic composition
that was written to be sung to music.

2. How does Keats characterize Autumn?

Answer: Keats depicts Autumn as a benevolent spirit. According to him Autumn is a season of mists
and fruits. It causes the fruits and flowers to grow plentifully. It makes all fruits ripe and juicy and
causes flowers to blossom late in the season in order to supply the bees with honey, against the cold
season.

3. “Close bosom friend of the maturing sun"- Who is the ‘bosom friend’? What do you mean by
‘maturing sun’? What does the friend want to do with the help of the sun?

Answer: Autumn is described as the ‘bosom friend’ of the sun. The phrase, ‘to mature’ here means
‘to ripen’. The sun ripens fruits. With the help of the sun, the friend (i.e. Autumn), wants to ripen all
fruits and cause all flowers to bloom.

4. “Conspiring with him .....” – Who conspires with whom? Is for any evil purpose? Bring out the
implication of the world ‘conspiring’.

Answer: The Autumn season involves ‘conspiring’ with the sun, her close friend.
No, the season is not in league with the sun for any evil purpose. She is rather seen as a benevolent
spirit, conferring well-being on the trees and plants. Here, ‘conspiring’ means ‘planning’ or ‘co-
operating’ while taken literally; ‘conspiring’ means a breathing together (Latin Spiro means ‘breath').
The union between the two agents the sun and the earth will produce the rich bounty of harvest
time.

5. “Until they think warm days will never cease.” -Who are ‘they’? Why do they think so?

Answer: 'They’ here refers to the bees mentioned in the poem, Ode to Autumn by John Keats.

Though spring and summer are over, flowers continue blooming in huge numbers. This leads the
bees to think that warm days will never arrive.

6. “Summer has o’er brimm’d their clammy cells.” – Whose cells are meant here? What do you
mean by ‘clammy’? What causes the over brimming?

Answer: The cells of the bees are meant here.

‘Clammy’ means sticky. The cells or small holes in a bee hive overflow with honey collected by the
bees all through the summer and so became clammy.

During the summer season the bees have gathered honey from flowers and store them in the honey-
comb. The cells are now filled to overflowing.

7. “Who hath not seen thee amid thy store?” - Who is ‘thee’? What the ‘store’ referred to here?
What is ‘thee' doing here? How does the poet answer the generation?

Answer: ‘Thee' refers to Autumn presented as a harvester.

The store here refers to the granary strewn with corns.

After the corn is stored in the granary the harvester sits carefree on the floor and watches the
winnowing operation. The gentle wind lifts her hair tenderly.

8. “Sitting careless” - Who is sitting careless and why?

Answer: Autumn, as described in Keats’s Ode to Autumn, is imagined in the shape of a harvester
sitting careless. She is imagined so because she has finished her job of storing corns in the granary.

9. “Drowsed with the fume of puppies ..... swath and all its twined flowers;” - What is referred to as
twined flowers’? Explain the line.

Answer: Autumn is described under the image of a Reaper and now she has fallen asleep in the
midst of the field of poppies being overcome by the sleep inducing smell of the puppies. And due to
her drowsiness the ‘swath’ i.e. ‘the line of corn’ remains waiting to be cut along with its ‘twined
flowers’ i.e. the bunch of puppies intertwined with the stalks of grain.

10. “Or on a half reaped furrow ....” What do you mean by ‘furrow’? Who is found there? Why is the
furrow half reaped?

Answer: ‘Furrow’ means cornfield or the trench cut by the plough. Autumn in the character of reaper
is found there. The reaper has fallen asleep in the midst of her work as she is overcome by the
narcotic scent of puppies. So the furrow remains ‘half-reaped’.

11. “Or by cider-press” - Who is seen as a ‘cider-press'? What is the person doing there? What is
meant by the ‘cider-press'?
Answer: Autumn, personified as a ‘cider-press’, is seen as a ‘cider-press'. The ‘cider-press' or wine-
maker is sitting beside the machine. She is watching the juice of apples falling drops by drops. ‘Cider’
is a kind of wine. So ‘cider-press' is a kind of machine in which fruits like apples are pressed or
crushed to extract juice.

12. “Think not of them” - What are referred to by ‘them’? Who is addressed here? Why is the
person asked not to think of them?

Answer: By ‘them’, the poet refers to the ‘song of Spring’. Autumn is addressed here. Autumn is
asked not to think of Spring songs as she has her own music.

13. "Touch the stubble-plains” - Explain the line.

Answer: ‘Stubble' means the stumps of grains left sticking on the field after the corn has been
harvested. The ‘clouds’ tinged the newly reaped corn-field with a rosy hue.

14. Name some of the singers of the Autumn.

Answer: Small gnats among the river-willows, full grown lambs, hedge-crickets, robin-redbreast and
swallows are some singers of Autumn. They all together make a wilful choir singing mournfully in a
chorus in the season of Autumn.

15. “Thou hast thy music too.” -Who is referred to as ‘thou’? What is the music referred to here?

Answer: Autumn is pointed out as ‘thou'. Autumn has her own peculiar music. First, there is the
‘morning’ buzz of the swarm of gnats among the river-willows. Next there is a chirping song of the
hedge-cricket. Then grown full-grown lambs bleat from the hill and Robin Red Breasts whistle from
the garden. Lastly, the Swallows twitter as they rally for their winter migration.

16. “White barred cloud – day.” -Explain the line.

Answer: Keats presents the music of Autumn by a glorious sky scape. Fleece – like clouds often
gather around the setting sun and impart a crimson glow to the day of which is quietly passing away.

17. “......and now with treble soft.” - What is the meaning of the ‘treble soft’? Who is the singer
here?

Answer: ‘Treble soft' means ‘high-pitched but not harsh'. The Robin Red Breast is the singer here.

18. “And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”- What does the line imply?

Answer: The line from Keats's Ode to Autumn implies that the swallows that come together at close
of the day are sitting ready to migrate before the rival of Winter.

Describe the various aspects of Autumn embodied in Keats’ Ode to Autumn

Answer: The poem, Ode to Autumn frequently been termed the most nearly perfect short poem in
English. This is the last and most measure of Keats’ works. It is the most faultless, though not the
most sublime, of his odes.

The ode celebrates Autumn in its rich beauty and marvelous colours. It dwells on the characteristic
occupation of Autumn as well as its delightful sights and sounds.
Shakespearean in its rich serenity of mood, the poem breathes a spirit of happy contentment- not
always found in Keats. Nature is described for nature’s sake. So the poet is completely absent from
the poem.

Our enjoyment of autumnal beauty is disturbed by no romantic reflection. No looking before and
after, no real regret for the joys of Spring that is gone. Unlike Shelley, (“Can Spring be far behind?”)
Keats accepts the life of man exactly for what it is. In Autumn everything has reached fruition and in
Shakespearean term "Ripeness is all”.

However, Keats depicts Autumn as a benevolent spirit. It causes the fruit and flowers to grow
plentifully and in this it receives the co-operation of the sun. It burdens with grapes, the vines,
growing round the eaves of thatched roofs. The moss-covered trees of the cottage gardens bend low
because of the load of apples. It makes all fruit over ripe and juicy. It enlarges gourds and fattens the
hazel nuts with a sweet Kernel. Autumn also causes flowers to blossom late in the season in order to
supply the bees with honey, against the cold season. Now the bee-hives are full of the brim and
honey flows over them.

The poet then gives us a series of delectable pictures of Autumn in her usual forms a
occupation. First, she appears in the character of a harvester who, now that her work is done, sets
on the granary floor and her hair is gently tossed by the ‘winnowing wind’. Next we see a reaper who
being tired of over work has fallen asleep in the midst of her toil. She is induced to sleep by the
narcotic scent of puppies. Thirdly we come across the gleaner carrying home the sheaves of corn on
her head. She has to balance herself carefully filed folding a stream. Finally, Autumn is seen as a
wine-maker sitting by the side of the press and watching the apple-juice oozing hour by hour.

In the last stanza, the poet describes the music of Autumn. Where the days end, the clouds bloom
with the color of the setting sun. And the stubble left on the reaped fields are aglow with a beautiful
rosy here. At this hour the small gnats break forth into a mournful song by the riverside. One can
hear the loud bleating of the full-grown lambs from the hilly region. The crickets chirp shrilly in the
hedges. The robin redbreast whistles joyfully from the garden field. The swallows gather together
and twitter in the sky.

Ode to a Nightingale - John Keats'

Q. How does John Keats present the strife between pain and joy, pleasure and numbness, life and
death, mortal and immortal, real and ideal in the nature of life in his poem, Ode to a Nightingale?

Answer: An ode delineates its essence as a poem of celebration or praise that honour people or
events or addresses nature. In Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," he anticipates the essence of the
nightingale and contrasts it with his own worldly state and the nature of mortal life. He expresses a
strong subject of Romanticism in the ode. Nature, through the presence of nightingale, is a world of
beauty, peace, and freedom.

The nightingale turns almost as a muse for the poet's reflections as he moves from his initial
response to the song of the nightingale. For instance, in Stanza I the poet, whose“…heart aches and
a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock”

is touched by the bird's song, causing him to wish that he could reach a state of numb abstraction
with the bird.

In the poem, Ode to A Nightingale the poet, Keats draws the conflict between the Ideal and the
Real, time and timelessness, mortality and an escape into permanence. The real world for Keats is
acclimatized with flux and flexibility, an awareness of which causes pain. This notion of mutability
and the anguish resulting from it is explored in all details in Stanza III where Keats avers that human
life, health, beauty and love are all subject to mutability and hence result in ache:

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here …,

Here Keats divides himself from the nightingale as he understands that the "immortal Bird" is not
meant for death: There is a continuum for it as the "self-same song" has been overheard by Ruth
and others of the ages. With all these contradictory reflections, Keats wonders in the last line of the
ode if his thoughts are merely illusionary, "a waking dream."

In fact, in this poem, Keats develops leitmotifs that run concurrent with his other works, the question
of the worth of human existence and whether the creative spirit that is motivated by nature is
accomplished of capturing the true essence of beauty that is expressed in nature and that is a
reflection of a world that ordinary mortals cannot see. Keats feels related to the world beyond that
which is seen. He tries to seizure the essence of what he feels and sees in the eyes of imagination in
his poetry.

The main theme in "Ode to a Nightingale" that the poet, Keats draws is the reflection to the
conflicted nature of human life, i.e., the interconnection or fusion of pain and joy, intensity of feeling
and coldness or lack of feeling, life and death, mortal and immortal, the actual and the ideal, and
separation and connection."

Keats poetry is encouraged by his ability to slip between the veil that divides the earthly world from
the immortal world of eternity. He longs, as a human, bound to an earthly life, to hug the wonder
and joy of the spiritual realm. Actually, the poet begins to move into a world of imagination or
fantasy, wanting to escape from the pain of a joy-pain reality. He further glorifies the nightingale by
observing that

"Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!"

Within the ode, Keats moves from his meditation of the bird to a contemplation of his own feelings.
Dropping himself in the nightingale gives him a momentary relief from the unhappiness of his own
existence. The whole world of the nightingale is grander to his own. Repaying to himself as the music
of the nightingale fades away, he questions if his musings were real: