Kubla Khan

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

Or a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment

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!

Full poem