Kubla Khan

1. Kubla Khan In XanadudidKubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree :Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile groundWith 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.

2. Kubla Khan In XanadudidKubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree :Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile groundWith 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.

3. Kubla Khan In XanadudidKubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree :Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile groundWith 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.

4. But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slantedDown the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !A savage place ! as holy and enchantedAs e'er beneath a waning moon was hauntedBy 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 fountainmomently was forced :

5. Amid whose swift half-intermitted burstHuge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and everIt flung up momently the sacred river.Five miles meandering with a mazy motionThrough wood and dale the sacred river ran,

6. Then reached the caverns measureless to man,And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from farAncestral voices prophesying war ! The shadow of the dome of pleasureFloated midway on the waves ;Where was heard the mingled measureFrom the fountain and the caves.

7. It was a miracle of rare device,A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice ! A damsel with a dulcimerIn a vision once I saw :It was an Abyssinian maid,And on her dulcimer she played,Singing of Mount Abora.Could I revive within meHer symphony and song,To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

8. 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.

9. Pausanias Pausanias was a Greek travel writer in the second century AD, who described natural phenomena, and cities, covering their daily life, ceremonies, beliefs, and artwork in such detail that even today we can recognize what he was talking about. Coleridge's copy of Thomas Taylor's 1794 translation (Pausanias, The Description of Greece, translated by Thomas Taylor, 1794) ended up in William Wordsworth's library. Coleridge had probably read the original Greek, as well. Alph, the first of rivers The story of the river Alpheus descending into the earth, and then rising up in fountains appears in Pausanias, whom Coleridge probably read in the original, as well as in Thomas Taylor's translation. Coleridge could not get enough of Taylor, according to Lowes. Speaking of this story, Lowes says that Coleridge "Could scarcely have escaped it in Pausanias." Pausanias does draw an explicit parallel between the Nile and the Alpheus, a connection that Lowes feels lies behind much of the imagery in Kubla Khan. Like Alph, the sacred river in Kubla Khan, the Alpheus runs far below the earth, emerges in a fountain, and runs toward the sea. Text But the Alpheus appears to possess something different from other rivers; for it often hides itself in the earth, and again rises out of it. Thus it…merges itself in the Tegeatic land. Ascending from hence in Asaea, and mingling itself with the water of Eurotas, it falls a second time into the earth, emerges from hence, in that place which the Arcadians call the fountains, and running through the Pisaean and Olympian plains, pours itself into the sea…Nor can the agitation of the Adriatic sea restrain its course; for running through this mighty and violent sea, it mingles itself with the water of Arethusa in Ortygia…retaining its ancient name Alpheus.