Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 17721834550. Kubla Khan
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. | 5 |
So twice five miles of fertile ground | |
With walls and towers were girdled round: | |
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills | |
Where blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree; | |
And here were forests ancient as the hills, | 10 |
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. | |
But O, 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 | 15 |
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 | 20 |
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 | 25 |
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, | |
Then reach’d 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! | 30 |
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, | 35 |
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 play’d, | 40 |
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, | 45 |
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! | 50 |
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. |