Kubla Khan

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.

About the Poem

Shangdu was Kublai Khan's summer capital in China. One night, after reading about the city, Coleridge experienced an opium-influenced dream.

Upon waking, he began to write down the lines that had come to him.

Whereupon he was interrupted by a "person from Porlock" who caused him to forget most of it.

About Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 - 1834

An English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian, Coleridge was a founder of the Romantic Movement and a major influencer of English literature and American Transcendentalism.

Throughout his life, he was physically unhealthy, suffering from crippling anxiety and depression, which he treated with opium.

His marriage, prompted by social constraints, was unhappy. Among his many writings is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Special

I'm memorizing this one, albeit slowly and fitfully.

For the pleasure it gives me to sing it.