The full text:
Kubla Khan
Or, a Vision in a Dream
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!
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.
*** Original ends***
And even as they wove the ring,
And even as they ceased to sing,
I heard — O faint at first and far
As under ice the river's jar —
The dulcimer! the dulcimer!
And all my blood made answer to her:
Her symphony, her song, returned!
Within me all Abora burned;
And loud and long the music grew,
And out of empty air it drew —
Drew dome and dale and sunny ground,
And wall and tower girdled round,
Till they that wove the circle there
Beheld the dome ascend the air:
The shadow first, and then the gleam,
Then all the substance of the dream;
And cried no more Beware! but stood
Like children in a charmèd wood;
For there it hung, the rare device,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And through the dome, and round, and under,
Ran Alph the river, soft with thunder.
It was the hour when Xanadu
Lay steeped in moonlight and in dew;
When every incense-bearing tree
Distilled its sweetness silently,
And, white above the chasm's gloom,
The fountain tossed its ghostly bloom.
Then walked the Khan in slow delight
Along the marges of the night,
And watched the shadow of his dome
Lie midway on the moving foam,
And heard beneath the fretted floor
The sacred river's buried roar,
And, ever mingled with its fall,
The voices of his fathers call —
Now near, now far, now almost plain,
Now drowned beneath the flood again —
And ever, from the caves of ice,
One voice that cried, and cried it thrice:
"The dome shall stand while stands the song;
The sword is short, the song is long:
What Kubla builds of stone shall be
The spoil of sword and snow and sea,
But what is built of song shall stand
When sea and snow and sword are sand."
So twice ten summers girdled round
With gold the towers and fertile ground;
But in the waning of the last,
The watchman heard a trumpet blast
Beyond the bastions of the snow,
And morning showed the moving foe:
Out of the north the horsemen came
With hoofs of thunder, eyes of flame;
Ten thousand banners, black and gold,
Poured down the passes of the cold;
And he who led them none had seen:
A shadow where a face had been;
And where he rode the grasses paled,
And the high noon above was veiled.
By that deep chasm's cedarn cover,
Where wailed the woman for her lover,
Now wailed ten thousand; hail on hail
The arrows mocked the thresher's flail;
The engines slung their vaulting stone
Like fragments from the fountain thrown;
And all day long, with mazy motion,
Red ran the river to the ocean.
Three days the girdled walls held good;
Three nights, about the haunted wood,
The watch-fires of the faceless king
Burned round the dome in narrowing ring;
And on the fourth, at fall of day,
The gates of Xanadu gave way.
Then, as his shadow crossed the sill,
The mighty fountain first stood still —
Stood still! and through the holy ground
There went a hush more dread than sound:
The earth, that long had seemed to breathe
In fast thick pants the turf beneath,
Held in her breath; and every rill
Hung in mid-motion, bright and still.
Then with a sigh from every cave
Rose Alph the sacred, wave on wave,
And round the dome of pleasure wound
His sinuous arms without a sound,
And drew it, dale and tower and all,
Down, as the dews of evening fall —
Not as a city falls to flame,
But as a dream, the way it came;
And caverns measureless to man
Received the dome — received the Khan.
And when the slow grey morning broke
There was no city and no smoke,
Nor wall, nor tower, nor incense-tree,
Nor sign of what was wont to be:
Only the ancient hills, and wan
Sweet meadows where the river ran;
And from beneath them, faint and clear,
A mingled measure rose; for fear
The horsemen wheeled, the host gave ground,
And fled the unconquerable sound;
And he that had no face to show
Turned, and was mist, and mixed with snow.
But far beneath the lifeless main
The dome of pleasure stands again —
Whole, as it sank; and girdled round
With twice five miles of glimmering ground;
And there the gardens, sweet as sleep,
Burn green and blue along the deep,
And forests ancient as the hills
Enfold the slow phosphoric rills;
For of itself the dome gives light,
A noon within the ocean's night,
A sunny dome no sun has lit,
With caves of ice beneath it knit;
And there the Khan, his wars all done,
Walks in the light that needs no sun,
And hears, more near than memory,
A music moving through the sea:
For there the Abyssinian maid
Plays ever, as of old she played,
And, wave by wave and year by year,
Makes all the deep a dulcimer.
And when on earth the moon is high,
And the long tides go yearning by,
Her measure, rising through the foam,
Goes forth to call the dreamers home:
It finds the gate of horn, and streams
Into the haunted house of dreams;
And whoso hears it, half awake,
Must sing thereafter for its sake,
And, waking, labour all life long
To build its likeness into song;
And mariners on midnight seas,
That hear faint strings upon the breeze,
Have leaned, and seen beneath the spray
A sunrise where no sunrise lay.
And therefore, in a vision, I
Beheld that damsel: this is why
Her symphony and song could win me,
And the dead music wake within me;
For, rising from the sunken dome,
Her measure crossed the midnight foam,
And climbed the cliffs of sleep, and found
A dreamer upon English ground.
And I have fed, and I have drunk;
The song that with the city sunk
Is risen in me, loud and long,
And all the dome is in the song.
So weave the circle round me thrice,
But close your eyes in bliss, not dread:
The milk of Paradise is shed
On all who hear; the caves of ice
Are cool upon the brows of men;
The dome is in the air again;
And when my song and I are gone,
Down in the deep it will shine on:
For, ancient as the hills, the sea
Enfolds that sunny mystery,
And there, till sea and song are done,
The sunless deep enfolds a sun.
