Literary Thursdays: Kubla Khan

Thursdays are a day that I want to dedicate to discussing literature: from my favorite books, to things I'm reading, to prose, to my own writing. Reading and writing is one of my favorite enjoyments in life and therefore, I really wanted to set a day each week aside that I could share that passion with you.

This week I'm pretty busy between a pile of med school work that is amassing and spending time with loved ones, so I do apologize that my post tonight will be shorter than previous nights or Thursdays in the future. Nonetheless, since it is my first ever Literary Thursday, I want to make it something special and so I have decided to share one of my absolute favorite pieces of poetry.

Kubla Khan

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.

 

I first came across reference to this poem in one of my all-time favorite movies "Xanadu" (I won't go into any detail about the movie here because I know I'll end up talking about it some Monday or another) in which the first couple lines of the first stanza are repeated a few times. I don't know why but it just always has resonated with me. It's not so much the flowery language or the image that it produces that speaks to me so much but rather the emotion it evokes. I guess that I just picture my version of that paradise each of our minds construct somewhere deep within our personal subconscious and I feel at home. To me, Xanadu is not a place nor a time, but rather a sense of belonging. Love.

 

-JT