Kubla Khan -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 KUBLA KHAN – 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 here 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 was!

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 palyed,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ’t would 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. 

 

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 Kubla Khan – Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

 

In a place called Xanadu, the Mongolian leader Kubla Khan ordered his servants to construct an impressive domed palace for pleasure and recreation on the banks of the holy river Alph, which ran through a series of caves so vast that no one could measure them, and then down into an underground ocean. So, they created a space with ten miles of fertile earth surrounded by walls the towers. Ant in it there were gardens with sunny little streams and fragrant trees, as well as very old forests with sunny clearings in the middle. 

 

But, oh, how beautiful was that deep, impressive gorge that cut through the green hill, between the Cedar trees! It was such a wild place! A place so sacred and bewitching that you might expect it to be haunted by woman crying out for her satanic lover beneath the crescent moon. And out of this gorge, with its endlessly churning rivers, a geyser would sometimes erupt, as though the ground itself were breathing hard. This geyser would send shards of rock flying into the air like hail, or like grain scattered as it is being harvested. 

 

And as it flung up these rocks, the geyser would also briefly send the water of the holy river bursting up into the air. The holy river ran for five miles in a lazy, winding course through woods and fields, before it reached the incredibly deep caves and sank in a flurry into the much stiller ocean. And in the rushing waters of the caves, Kubla Khan heard the voices of his ancestors, predicting that war would come. The shadow of Kubla Khan’s pleasure palace was refleced by the waves, and you could hear the sound of the geyser mingling with that of the water rushing through the caves. This was truly a miraculous place: Khan’s pleasure palace was both sunny and had icy caves.   

 

In a vision I once saw an Abyssinian maid paly a dulcimer (a stringed musical instrument) and sing about a mountain Abora in Abyssinia. If I could recreate within myself the sound of her instrument and her song, it would bring me so much joy that I would build Kubla Khan’s pleasure palace in the sky above me: that sun-filled dome, those caves full of ice! And everyone who heard the song would look up and see what I had built, and they would cry out: “Be careful! Look at his wild eyes and crazy hair! Make a circle him three times and refuse to look at him: he had eaten the food of the gods and drunk the milk of paradise!”  

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