The 'sacred river' Alph ran 'five miles meandering with a mazy motion' by Kubla's 'pleasure dome', and then dissolved itself down into the 'sunless sea'. The alliterative 'sunless sea' conjures up a visual image of vast, tumultous darkness. But is this an image of nocturnal darkness when there is no sun in the sky? Or does it refer to a more elemental darkness when/where there is no sun at all? Coleridge tells that the river Alph went underground through 'caverns measureless to man' down to the 'sunless sea', which means that the dark sea is a subterranean sea. Since we are not aware of any such sea, the image is one of dreadful mystery & confusion.
If the 'sacred river' Alph symbolises life and the same dissolves into the roaring depths of the 'sunless sea', the mysteriously dreadful sea must be symbolic of death. This 'sunless sea' of stanza 1 is called the 'lifeless ocean' in stanza 2. Since the sun is the source of light & life on earth, sunlessness means lifelessness; and the meandering river of life mingles into the mysterious darkness of death.
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