Kubla Khan such a beautiful poem.I always try to visualize what the caves of ice would look like and the woman wailing for her demon lover

While the two are not much alike, I always think of Coleridge as the English Walt Whitman.

Both are highly uneven, both are imagists, and both can use language with the precision of a scalpel or with hamfisted clumsiness.

I am only familiar with "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," but that raises him toward the top rank if not quite there.

Had he gone easy on the opium, Coleridge might be remembered as the greatest of the Romantic poets. As it is, he wrote two outstanding poems and several OK ones until he 'sunk inextricably in putrescent idleness' (Carlyle I think-those wonderful Victorian insults!). Before he became a full-time junkie, Coleridge wrote some unforgettable lines: "In Xandu, did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure dome decree/Where Alph the sacred river ran/though caverns measureless to man/Down to a sunless sea..."

How I would love to see Xanadu! I don't know that his work suffered from his opiate addiction, I think it's possible that it enhanced it, not just in the imaginative sense, but in the sense of the great highs and lows that such addiction brings with it. I do think that the world would have seen more of him sans addiction, but would it have been the same?

Gifted poet, tremendous intellect whose greatest moments of fancy supposedly occured off the page. Was, much like Ezra Pound later on, very influential on the works of other great poets to the extent that their production was more accomplished that his. Some great visionary language in his poems and a spirited embrace of heroic forms make his stuff still quite readable. Coleridge's oeuve suffers from his opiate addiction and many in the literary set feel he would have ranked among the truly great if he wasn't so strung out.

A very imaginative poet.

Hear the Rime of the Ancient Mariner!

HEAR THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER!!!!!

Xanadu is a marvellously imaginative flight of opium-assisted fancy,The Ancient Mariner also an extremely interesting,unusual voyage.If they're his best known works,my personal favourite is the quite brilliant Frost at Midnight.This is the one where technique,imagery,feeling and contemplation are joined at his peak.