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    Kubla Khan and Other Poems
    Kubla Khan and Other Poems
    Kubla Khan and Other Poems
    Ebook160 pages4 hours

    Kubla Khan and Other Poems

    By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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    About this ebook

    Kubla Khan is a poem composed one night after Samuel Taylor Coleridge experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInteractive Media
    Release dateJun 27, 2016
    ISBN9781911495185
    Kubla Khan and Other Poems
    Author

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher, whose Lyrical Ballads (1798), written with William Wordsworth, started the English Romantic movement. He was born in Ottery St Mary where his father was the vicar, and he was at school with Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt, and spent two years at Jesus College, Cambridge. He is best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, but his critical work, especially on Shakespeare was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. He also suffered from poor physical health that may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these concerns with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.

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      Book preview

      Kubla Khan and Other Poems - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

      KHAN

      KUBLA KHAN

      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 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

      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.

      1798.

      CHRISTABEL

      PART THE FIRST

      ‘Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,

      And the owls have awakened the crowing cock,"

      Tu—whit!—Tu—whoo!

      And hark, again! the crowing cock,

      How drowsily it crew.

      Sir Leoline; the Baron rich,

      Hath a toothless mastiff, which

      From her kennel beneath the rock

      Maketh answer to the clock,

      Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;

      Ever and aye, by shine and shower,

      Sixteen short howls, not over loud;

      Some say, she sees my lady’s shroud.

      Is the night chilly and dark?

      The night is chilly, but not dark.

      The thin gray cloud is spread on high,

      It covers but not hides the sky.

      The moon is behind, and at the full;

      And yet she looks both small and dull.

      The night is chill, the cloud is gray:

      ‘Tis a month before the month of May,

      And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

      The lovely lady, Christabel,

      Whom her father loves so well,

      What makes her in the wood so late,

      A furlong from the castle gate?

      She had dreams all yesternight

      Of her own betrothed knight;

      And she in the midnight wood will pray

      For the weal of her lover that’s far away.

      She stole along, she nothing spoke,

      The sighs she heaved were soft and low,

      And naught was green upon the oak

      But moss and rarest misletoe:

      She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,

      And in silence prayeth she.

      The lady sprang up suddenly,

      The lovely lady, Christabel!

      It moaned as near, as near can be,

      But what it is she cannot tell.—

      On the other side it seems to be,

      Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.

      The night is chill; the forest bare;

      Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?

      There is not wind enough in the air

      To move away the ringlet curl

      From the lovely lady’s cheek—

      There is not wind enough to twirl

      The one red leaf, the last of its clan,

      That dances as often as dance it can,

      Hanging so light, and hanging so high,

      On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

      Hush, beating heart of Christabel!

      Jesu, Maria, shield her well!

      She folded her arms beneath her cloak,

      And stole to the other side of the oak.

      What sees she there?

      There she sees a damsel bright,

      Drest in a silken robe of white,

      That shadowy in the moonlight shone:

      The neck that made that white robe wan,

      Her stately neck, and arms were bare;

      Her blue-veined feet unsandal’d were,

      And wildly glittered here and there

      The gems entangled in her hair.

      I guess, ‘twas frightful there to see

      A lady so richly clad as she—

      Beautiful exceedingly!

      Mary mother, save me now!

      (Said Christabel,) And who art thou?

      The lady strange made answer meet,

      And her voice was faint and sweet:—

      Have pity on my sore distress,

      I scarce can speak for weariness:

      Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear!

      Said Christabel, How camest thou here?

      And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet,

      Did thus pursue her answer meet:—

      My sire is of a noble line,

      And my name is Geraldine:

      Five warriors seized me yestermorn,

      Me, even me, a maid forlorn:

      They choked my cries with force and fright,

      And tied me on a palfrey white.

      The palfrey was as fleet as wind,

      And they rode furiously behind.

      They spurred amain, their steeds were white:

      And once we crossed the shade of night.

      As sure as Heaven shall rescue me,

      I have no thought what men they be;

      Nor do I know how long it is

      (For I have lain entranced I wis)

      Since one, the tallest of the five,

      Took me from the palfrey’s back,

      A weary woman, scarce alive.

      Some muttered words his comrades spoke:

      He placed me underneath this oak;

      He swore they would return with haste;

      Whither they went I cannot tell

      I thought I heard, some minutes past,

      Sounds as of a castle bell.

      Stretch forth thy hand (thus ended she),

      And help a wretched maid to flee.

      Then Christabel stretched forth her hand,

      And comforted fair Geraldine:

      O well, bright dame! may you command

      The service of Sir Leoline;

      And gladly our stout chivalry

      Will he send forth and friends withal

      To guide and guard you safe and free

      Home to your noble father’s hall.

      She rose: and forth with steps they passed

      That strove to be, and were not, fast.

      Her gracious stars the lady blest,

      And thus spake on sweet Christabel:

      All our household are at rest,

      The hall as silent as the cell;

      Sir Leoline is weak in health,

      And may not well awakened be,

      But we will move as if in stealth,

      And I beseech your courtesy,

      This night, to share your couch with me.

      They crossed the moat, and Christabel

      Took the key that fitted well;

      A little door she opened straight,

      All in the middle of the gate;

      The gate that was ironed within and without

      Where an army in battle array had marched out.

      The lady sank, belike through pain,

      And Christabel with might and main

      Lifted her up, a weary weight,

      Over the threshold of the gate:

      Then the lady rose again,

      And moved, as she were not in pain.

      So free from danger, free from fear,

      They crossed the court: right glad they were.

      And Christabel devoutly cried

      To the lady by her side,

      Praise we the Virgin all divine

      Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!

      Alas! alas! said Geraldine,

      I cannot speak for weariness.

      So free from danger, free from fear,

      They crossed the court: right glad they were.

      Outside her kennel, the mastiff old

      Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.

      The mastiff old did not awake,

      Yet she an angry moan did make!

      And what can ail the mastiff bitch?

      Never till now she uttered yell

      Beneath the eye of Christabel.

      Perhaps it is the owlet’s scritch:

      For what can ail the mastiff bitch?

      They passed the hall, that echoes still,

      Pass as lightly as you will!

      The brands were flat, the brands were dying,

      Amid their own white ashes lying;

      But when the lady passed, there came

      A tongue of light, a fit of flame

      And Christabel saw the lady’s eye,

      And nothing else saw she thereby,

      Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall,

      Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall.

      O softly tread, said Christabel,

      My father seldom sleepeth well.

      Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare,

      And jealous of the listening air

      They steal their way from stair to stair,

      Now in glimmer, and now in gloom,

      And now they pass the Baron’s room,

      As still as death with stifled breath!

      And now have reached her chamber door;

      And now doth Geraldine press down

      The rushes of the chamber floor.

      The moon shines dim in the open

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