Xanadu

I have to admit, if ever I’m asked to think of a word beginning with the letter X, I almost always think of the word Xanadu.

It’s thanks to the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Specifically the first five lines of the poem:

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.

I know the poem is more than those five lines, but it’s those lines that I remember and that bring all sorts of images into my head. I can’t remember when I first read them, but as a child I remember wondering where Xanadu was, and could I go there?

And forget Xanadu, wouldn’t it be amazing to sail down the sacred river Alph, into those huge caverns? I would love to see that sunless sea, where is it, in the middle of the earth? You know those ideas you had of digging all the way through the earth and popping up on the other side? I loved the idea that maybe there was a sea in the middle of it all…

I wish I still had the books of my childhood. It’s one of those things, when you leave your country of birth and move to another, the books are heavy and get left behind. But never mind, I have loads of books now, and I have many copies of the poem…

I love this poem. So many images.

Kubla Khan
BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

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.

Ugh, I can’t get the formatting right. See this version.