Kubla Khan (1816)

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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  • 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.

Poem text provided by Public Domain Poetry .

Images and text on this page taken from Wikipedia:

  • Kubla Khan
  • Image of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Additional resources provided that may or may not be used on this page:

  • Xanadu on Map of Asia
  • Hard Paper Texture
  • Sand
  • Hiking the Sand Dunes

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