KUBLA KHAN: OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. A FRAGMENT. دو In the summer of the year 1797, the author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effect of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in "Purchas's Pilgrimage: "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto: and thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall." The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose, up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of 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 1 Composition, &c.] Coleridge dictated Zapolya, walking about his room, as Goethe did his Autobiography. 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 1 And each mis-shape the other. Stay awhile, Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes :- The visions will return! And lo! he stays, 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. Avptov adiov äow: 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.—1816.2 KUBLA KHAN. N Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree : Down to a sunless sea. 1 Mis-shape.] Read "mis-shapes." Coleridge is quoting from his own poem, The Picture, or the Lover's Resolution. (See p. 51.) 2 1816.] This is the date of the publication of Christabel, to which Kubla Khan and The Pains of Sleep were appended. The Sibylline Leaves was already in type, though it was not issued till the following year. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, 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 : The shadow of the dome of pleasure |