"
Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment" is a poem written by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. According to Coleridge's Preface to "Kubla Khan", the poem was composed one night after he experienced an
opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing
Xanadu, the summer palace of the
Mongol ruler and Emperor of China
Kublai Khan. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by
a person from Porlock. The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of
Lord Byron, it was published.