“Kubla Khan” Summary

In a place called Xanadu, the Mongolian leader Kubla Khan ordered his servants to construct an impressive domed building for pleasure and recreation on the banks of the holy river Alph, which ran through a series of caves so vast that no one could measure them, and then down into an underground ocean. So they created a space with 10 miles of fertile earth surrounded by walls and towers. And in it there were gardens with sunny little streams and fragrant trees, as well as very old forests with sunny clearings in the middle.

But, oh, how beautiful was that deep, impressive gorge that cut through the green hill, between the cedar trees! It was such a wild place! A place so sacred and bewitching that you might expect it to be haunted by a woman crying out for her satanic lover beneath the crescent moon. And out of this gorge, with its endlessly churning river, a geyser would sometimes erupt, as though the ground itself were breathing hard. This geyser would send shards of rock flying into the air like hail, or like grain scattered as it is being harvested. And as it flung up these rocks, the geyser would also briefly send the water of the holy river bursting up into the air. The holy river ran for five miles in a lazy, winding course through woods and fields, before it reached the incredibly deep caves and sank in a flurry into the much stiller ocean. And in the rushing waters of the caves, Kubla Khan heard the voices of his ancestors, predicting that war would come. The shadow of Kubla Khan's pleasure palace was reflected by the waves, and you could hear the sound of the geyser mingling with that of the water rushing through the caves. This was truly a miraculous place: Khan's pleasure palace was both sunny and had icy caves.

In a vision, I once saw an Ethiopian woman play a stringed instrument and sing about a mountain in Ethiopia. If I could recreate within myself the sound of her instrument and her song, it would bring me so much joy that I would build Kubla Khan’s pleasure palace in the sky above me: that sun-filled dome, those caves full of ice! And everyone who heard the song would look up and see what I had built, and they would cry out: “Be careful! Look at his wild eyes and crazy hair! Make a circle around him three times and refuse to look at him: he has eaten the food of the gods and drunk the milk of Heaven!”

Kubla Khan BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE:Text Kubla Khan

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