Poem
- 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.