the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the 3. In a note on a manuscript copy of 'Kubla
genie's son.' Khan,' Coleridge gave a more precise account of
7. Bereft. the nature of this 'sleep': 'This fragment with a 1. In the texts of 1816?29, this note began with good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a an additional short paragraph: 'The following frag-sort of reverie brought on by two grains of opium,
ment is here published at the request of a poet of taken to check a dysentery, at a farmhouse
great and deserved celebrity, and, as far as the between Porlock and Linton, a quarter of a mile
Author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a from Culbone Church, in the fall of the year,
psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any 1797.'
supposed poetic merits.' The 'poet of. . . celeb
.
KUBLA KHAN / 447
the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter:
Then all the charm Is broken?all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shape [s] the other. Stay awhile, Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes? The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon The visions will return! And lo! he stays, And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms Come trembling back, unite, and now once more The pool becomes a mirror.
[From Coleridge's The Picture; or, the Lover's Resolution, lines 91-100]
Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. Aupiov abiov aooo:4 but the to-morrow is yet to come.
As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease.5?
1816.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph,6 the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man
5 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;
io 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
is As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
4. 1 shall sing a sweeter song tomorrow (Greek; of demonic inspiration is much more than a mere recalled from Theocritus's Idyls 1.145). 'psychological curiosity.'
A number of Coleridge's assertions in this pref-5. Coleridge refers to 'The Pains of Sleep.'
ace have been debated by critics: whether the 6. Derived probably from the Greek river Alpheus,
poem was written in 1797 or later, whether it was which flows into the Ionian Sea. Its waters were
actually composed in a 'dream' or opium reverie, fabled to rise again in Sicily as the fountain of Are-
even whether it is a fragment or in fact is complete. thusa.
All critics agree, however, that this visionary poem
.
44 8 / SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced:
20 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.
25 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
30 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.
35 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,
40 And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora.7 Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
45 That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And
