As I fiddled about with the sounds, they came to fit the words better and better:
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
A damsel, and on her dulcimer she played
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
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Forests ancient as the hills,
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
It flung up momently the sacred river.
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover
Midway on the waves
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves
It was a miracle of rare device.
Weave a circle round him thrice,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
(Kubla Khan, opium fragment by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit this work under the following conditions:
* Please consider sharing revenue!