KUBLA KHAN. SUGGESTED TO THE AUTHOR BY A PASSAGE IN PURCHAS'S PILGRIMAGE. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan1 A stately pleasure-dome decree, So twice five miles of fertile ground But, oh, that deep romantic chasm which slanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, A mighty fountain momently was forc'd; The shadow of the dome of pleasure 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 play'd, Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 't would win me, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all should cry, Beware! Beware! And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. 1 "In Xanadu." -I think I recollect a variation of this stanza, as follows: : In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-house ordain, Through caverns measureless to man, The nice-eared poet probably thought there were too many ns in these rhymes; and man and main are certainly not the best neighbours: yet there is such an open, sounding, and stately intonation in the words pleasure-house ordain, and it is so superior to pleasure-dome decree, that I am not sure I would not give up the correctness of the other terminations to retain it. But what a grand flood is this, flowing down through measureless caverns to a sea without a sun! I know no other sea equal to it, except Keats's, in his Ode to a Nightingale; and none can surpass that. 2" Ancestral voices prophesying war.”— -Was ever anything more wild, and remote, and majestic, than this fiction of the "ancestral voices?" Methinks I hear them, out of the blackness of the past. YOUTH AND AGE. Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying, When I was young? Ah, woful when! On winding lakes and rivers wide That fear no spite of wind or tide! Nought cared this body for wind or weather, Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; O the joys that came down shower-like, Ere I was old? Ah, woful ere! It cannot be, that thou art gone! I see these locks in silvery slips, But springtide blossoms on thy lips, That Youth and I are house-mates still. This is one of the most perfect poems, for style, feeling, and everything, that ever were written. THE HEATHEN DIVINITIES MERGED INTO ASTROLOGY. FROM THE TRANSLATION OF SCHILLER'S PICCOLOMINI. -Fable is Love's world, his home, his birthplace: The intelligible forms of ancient poets, Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanish'd; But still the heart doth need a language; still WORK WITHOUT HOPE. LINES COMPOSED 21ST FEBRUARY, 1827. All Nature seems at work. Stags leave their lair— And Winter, slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor paìr, nor build, nor sìng. |