This page is a microstub in development. These are pretty much entirely original thoughts: I haven’t studied existing interpretation or notes at all, beyond a little which sbp has told me about.
Once dreamed of, paradise is a distraction from reality. Kubla has a prophecy of war, and yet he’s building a pleasure-dome. The distraction is such that others wish to avoid it: “Beware! … for he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.” (Honey-dew is a biblical reference — the land of milk and honey.)
Paradise is imperfect, impossible: “chasm … haunted” … “woman, wailing for her demon-lover”
Is she in the pleasure-dome? Could she be the “woman wailing”?
Who is he? Is he in the pleasure-dome?
This is an unusual rhyme. I asked sbp if ‘far’ and ‘war’ were pronounced differently, so as to rhyme with each other, in Coleridge’s day. (/fɔ/ or /wɑ/, respectively, perhaps.) He said he didn’t know, but noted that Coleridge did speak with a strong Devonshire accent. Noah thought it was just a regular half-rhyme, but it’s the only one in the poem, and it’s in a rather unusual place. (Who knows, though? There could have been more half-rhymes in the other 200 lines which Coleridge forgot …)