beach

In the Wu biography of Mary Robinson, it is stated that Mary and Samuel Taylor Coleridge periodically engaged in dialogue with one another - Coleridge went so far as to send her a manuscript of Kubla Khan that actually inspired some of her poetry. One, therefore, can justifiably read The Haunted Beach with Kubla Khan and its imagery in mind.

In her E1 "Veiled Clarity," Kmasters argues, "for all its semblance of order, the poem is marked by ambiguity and vagueness; pronouns have no clear antecedents, shadowy light covers the scene, and the events themselves are told in reverse order." The Haunted Beach is similar to Coleridge's Kubla Khan in that it is dominated by intangible supernaturalism and fragmented, disorderly imagery. The mysterious, "lonely desert beach" of Mary Robinson's poem closely resembles Coleridge's Xanadu as a dark, fragmented, and savage setting.

Similar to the "sacred river" that winds through Xanadu, kmasters states that "the rhythm (of The Haunted Beach)also lends itself to the powerful ocean imagery; the crashing waves and jutting cliffs mirror the inexplicable forces which unravel the story." Both poems depend upon the consistency of water for poetic direction and as a medium for ideas to transmit themselves though. In both poems, moreover, the fluidity of the water imagery is juxtaposed with the images of "jutting cliffs," or in the instance of Kubla Khan, "a deep romantic chasm" and "caverns measureless to man." Moreover, the "little shed" appears as a small-scale representation of Kubla Khan's "pleasure-dome." Both appear haunted and empty to the poems' respective audience. The garderns and flowers and incense-bearing trees of Kubla Khan, however, have turned into "sea-weeds" and "weeds-for ever waving." The "woman wailing for her demon-lover" has been replaced by the eerie song of the "moaning wind" under the "moonlight scene."

The imagery and ideas of both poems, however, are not accessible to their audiences. The audience cannot fully comprehend the narrators' various messages and purposes. Kmasters similarly argues, "despite our apparent proximity to the scene, tangible facts continue to be inaccessible, and the narrator remains an unidentified, omniscient observer, limiting the reader’s ability to place ourselves in the elusive tale." Much as Coleridge's narrator (presumably himself) is preoccupied with his own subconscious and ill-rational thoughts, the narrator of the Haunted Beach is "unidentified" and ellusive. Both poems seem to follow the flow of water and meander aimlessly through the minds of its narrators. The problems and questions that arise in both poems are not resolved, even in their respective endings.