Coleridge and Shelley - Imagination and Narrative Voice

"Kubla Khan" is a poem of mixed feelings. I believe it celebrates imagination and then takes a turn to caution against its indulgence. According to the background information (pg. 758) Coleridge was describing a dream until it was interrupted when he awoke. As the first stanza starts off Coleridge describes a "pleasure-dome" with a sacred river that runs "through caverns measureless to man." This by all means seems to be a creative possibilty of paradise. In the second stanza is where the poem ventures off in to an opposite (negative) direction as he says "then reached the caverns endless to man." "Prophesying war" leads me to believe his dream was interuppted and he awoke to a reality, "with caves of ice." The caution of indugence is revealed when Coleridge says "and all should cry, beware! beware!" Coleridge seems to be setting in a theme to draw the line between the imaginative mind and reality.

In the sonnet “Ozymandias,” there are 4 speakers: the narrator, the traveler, the sculptor, and King Ozymandias.” The narrator is obviously just narrating the story that he is discovering from the traveler. The traveler is like a messenger between the sculptor and the narrator. His main purpose is to describe the sculptor’s thoughts of the king’s personality which are hostility and arrogance (“cold sneer”). Under the sculpture is a quote from King Ozymandias that says “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" it reflects his conceded personality and the irony of that statement since the statue is surrounded by nothing and it just sunken in to the sand. This represents King Ozymandias’ pride and how it backfired on him.