Kubla Khan
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless
sea.
So twice five miles of fertile
ground
With walls and towers were girdled
round;
And there were gardens bright with
sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an
incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the
hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm
which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn
cover!
A savage place! as holy and
enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was
haunted
By woman wailing for her
demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless
turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants
were breathing,
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:
And mid these dancing rocks at once
and ever
It flung up momently the sacred
river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy
motion
Through wood and dale the sacred
river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless
to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless
ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard
from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
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!
A damsel with a
dulcimer
In a vision once I
saw:
It was an
Abyssinian maid
And on her
dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount
Abora.
Could I revive
within me
Her symphony and
song,
To such a deep
delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them
there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating
hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
