DLTK's Poems
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.
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 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.
