What does 'rare device' refer to?

What does rare device refer to in the line 'It was a miracle of rare device' of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, Kubla Khan?

Solution 1:

The full lines are:

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

The phrase rare device means that it (in this case, the "pleasure-dome") was uniquely devised. In other words, it is an incredible, "miraculous" creation.

Another example in literature includes:

"So fashioned a Porch with rare device..."
"As either might for wealth haue gotten beene, Or could be fram'd by workman's rare device."

-Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

Solution 2:

'Device' comes from the verb 'to devise' (create, invent). Device here relates to the act of devising, or the intangible idea of something having been created, not the thing itself. To our modern, machinery-focused mind, it seems that 'device' necessarily means a widget, but that is not so.

Solution 3:

I'd suggest that whilst it is the pleasure dome that is being described, it is actually the miracle that is of rare device. The meaning being that it was not just any miracle but a rare and mystical one at that.