Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan [1]
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 [2]
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 [3].
[Footnote 1 : Kubla or Kublai Khan was a Mongol military leader and founder of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China. He was the grandson of the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. Kublai Khan ordered to build a magnificent pleasure-palace at Xanadu, on the bank of river Alph. In the ten square miles area there was palaces, gardens, orchards, winding streams, aromatic trees and old forests.
Footnote 2 : a kind of stringed musical instrument
Footnote 3 : imaginary drink which induces poetic inspiration]
What I Feel:
"Kubla Khan" was written probably in 1798, though it was first published in 1816. But the question as to whether the poem should be considered a complete whole or a fragment, its meaning, and the veracity of Coleridge's recollections. He states in his preface to the poem: "The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], and, as far as the Author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the grounds of any supposed poetic merits”. In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. He writes how he had fallen asleep after taking opium (Coleridge, a life-long victim of neuralgia, became addicted to opium which was prescribes to relieve his pain) while reading a travel-book, ‘Purchas His Pilgrimage’, concerning Kublai Khan’s pleasure-palace, and how on awakening he wrote down this fragment inspired by a dream he was dreaming. But a certain person interrupted him, and he could not recollect the rest of the dream later. And the poem remained unfinished forever.
In the first part of the poem Coleridge speaks of the pleasure-palace of Kublai Khan and the surrounding places of marvellous yet weird beauty. The second part deals with the power of poetic imagination. Here the poet describes a strange vision he had seen of an Abyssinian girl playing a song of rare charm on dulcimer. The song was so wonderful that the poet felt that it would set him to create things of wonder like ‘the sunny dome’ or its ‘caves of ice’ in air. Those who would listen to his poetry would be able to see the dome in imagination.
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