"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree..." 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 the poem, it was composed one night in the wake of an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan. He left it unpublished, reserved for private readings among friends until 1816, when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it was published. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was an English poet, critic and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England, and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (1792) and 'Kubla Khan' (1816), as well as his major prose work 'Biographia Literaria' (1817).