Xanadu By Coleridge

"Xanadu" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

Order	Verse
A1	In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A2	A stately pleasure-dome decree:
A3	Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
A4	Through caverns measureless to man
A5	Down to a sunless sea.
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Order	Verse
B1	So twice five miles of fertile ground
B2	With walls and towers were girdled round:
B3	And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
B4	Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
B5	And here were forests ancient as the hills,
B6	Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
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Order	Verse
C1	But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
C2	Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
C3	A savage place! as holy and enchanted
C4	As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
C5	By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
C6	And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
C7	As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
C8	A mighty fountain momently was forced:
C9	Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
C10	Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
C11	Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
C12	And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
C13	It flung up momently the sacred river.
C14	Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
C15	Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
C16	Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
C17	And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
C18	And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
C19	Ancestral voices prophesying war!
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Order	Verse
D1	The shadow of the dome of pleasure
D2	Floated midway on the waves;
D3	Where was heard the mingled measure
D4	From the fountain and the caves.
D5	It was a miracle of rare device,
D6	A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
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Order	Verse
E1	A damsel with a dulcimer
E2	In a vision once I saw:
E3	It was an Abyssinian maid,
E4	And on her dulcimer she played,
E5	Singing of Mount Abora.
E6	Could I revive within me
E7	Her symphony and song,
E8	To such a deep delight 'twould win me
E9	That with music loud and long
E10	I would build that dome in air,
E11	That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
E12	And all who heard should see them there,
E13	And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
E14	His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
E15	Weave a circle round him thrice,
E16	And close your eyes with holy dread,
E17	For he on honey-dew hath fed
E18	And drunk the milk of Paradise.
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