What does the underworld symbolize in "Kubla Khan"?What does the underworld symbolize? Where does one go when one ventures into the dark world...

The sheer magic of Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan eludes every attempt to arrive at an explanation, clear and conclusive.

In Stanza 1, Coleridge presents a 'sacred river' called Alph, a mystical, extra-geographical river which runs overground for a few miles before dissolving itself into a sub-terranean 'sunless sea' by jumping through 'caverns measureless to man'. This is an underworld, eerie & invisible, and full of commotion.

In Stanza 2, we are told of the birth of the river from a 'mighty fountain' at the bottom of a 'deep romantic chasm'.The upjetting water of the fountain thrusts itself upward in 'half-intermitted bursts' producing yet another turmoil, this time a commotion of a perpetual moment of the birth of life. Pieces of rocks being thrown upwards assume a dancing pattern to give us a combined impression of violence and harmony.

Thus the two underworlds respectively symbolise the dark, invisible world of death & the deeply embedded world of life being perpetually born.It is the river of life--'five miles meandering with a mazy motion'--which is being continually born at one end, and perpetually dying at the other.