In other words, the simile is more concrete and memorable than the green hill it is supposed to describe. The lack of 'realism' of the poem becomes even more evident through the use of such strange language: the use of language is more important than describing something 'real' like a hill.

If this were not extravagant enough, Coleridge piles yet another image on top of this one that asks the reader to imagine in terms of 'as if': "A mighty fountain momently was forced: / Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst/Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, / or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail." Again, the image of the fountain is actually less striking than the simile, the grain being threshed and the fierce hail.

Images piles on top of images, similes upon similes to the point that by the time the reader arrives in Kubla's palace, he or she has...
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