Scholars have long debated the meaning of Coleridge’s images in “Kubla Khan.” Just as dreams have many interpretations, so too does this dream-inspired poem. However, it is clear that the river in the poem deserves consideration, as the poet pays ample attention to it. 

Alph, the name of the “sacred river” (Line 3), a five-mile-long body of water “meandering with a mazy motion” (Line 25). The river travels through the verdant land and plunges underground into the foreboding “caverns measureless to man” (Line 4), becoming a “lifeless ocean […]” (Line 28). Coleridge repeatedly draws readers’ attention to the river’s pleasant passage above ground and its mysterious life in the caves. 

Various critics have suggested the river is a symbol for creativity, inspiration, the imagination, or the mind. Just as the river is a source of the land’s abundance, it may be Coleridge’s conception of the creative wellspring from which art derives. Like the river, the imagination can “meande[r] with a mazy motion” (Line 25) or spout with torrential ideas, like the fountain.

Others see the river as key to the poem’s natural imagery. Coleridge may have portrayed this river as fueling the magical landscape and ultimately placing man at its mercy with its sudden, prophetic fountain.