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| IN 1 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. | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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! | 30 |
| |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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 play’d, | 40 |
| 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, | 45 |
| 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! | 50 |
| 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. | |
