64 lines
2.4 KiB
Plaintext
64 lines
2.4 KiB
Plaintext
1798
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KUBLA KHAN
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by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
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A stately pleasure-dome decree:
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Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
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Through caverns measureless to man
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Down to a sunless sea.
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So twice five miles of fertile ground
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With walls and towers were girdled round:
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And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
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Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
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And here were forests ancient as the hills,
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Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
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But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
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Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
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A savage place! as holy and enchanted
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As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
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By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
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And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
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As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
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A mighty fountain momently was forced;
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Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
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Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
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Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
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And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
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It flung up momently the sacred river.
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Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
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Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
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Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
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And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
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And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
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Ancestral voices prophesying war!
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The shadow of the dome of pleasure
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Floated midway on the waves:
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Where was heard the mingled measure
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From the fountain and the caves.
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It was a miracle of rare device,
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A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
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A damsel with a dulcimer
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In a vision once I saw:
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It was an Abyssinian maid,
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And on her dulcimer she played,
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Singing of Mount Abora.
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Could I revive within me
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Her symphony and song,
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To such a deep delight 't would win me
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That with music loud and long,
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I would build that dome in air,
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That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
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And all who heard should see them there,
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And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
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His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
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Weave a circle round him thrice,
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And close your eyes with holy dread,
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For he on honey-dew hath fed,
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And drunk the milk of Paradise.
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THE END
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