Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kubla Khan: Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment

The poem was composed in the summer of 1798 when Coleridge, having taken an opiate pain-killer, fell asleep whilst reading Purchas his Pilgrimage (1626; Book Iv, Ch 8, p 418: “In Xanadu did Culblai Can build a stately palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall…”). Coleridge awoke from the dream with an entire poem of 2-300 lines in his head and indited the following lines before the visit of a person from Porlock interrupted his thoughts. When he returned to his poem, “All the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast”.

		In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
		A stately pleasure-dome decree:
		Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
		Through caverns measureless to man
5		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;
10		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
15		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:
20		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.
25		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
30		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.
35		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,
40		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,
45		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!
50		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.

First published 1798 / 1816

Robert Clark

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kubla Khan: Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment

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