KUBLA KHAN: OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

A FRAGMENT.

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, ther in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Liuton, 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 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
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,

And each mis-shape the other. Stay awhile,

Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes—

The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon

The visions will return! And lo! he stays,

And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms

Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror.

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. Avpiov üdiov ŭow: but the to-morrow is yet to come.

As a contrast to this vision, I have anuexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease

-1816.

KUBLA KHAN.

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.

THE PAINS OF SLEEP.

ERE on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eyelids close,
With reverential resignation,

No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, everywhere
Eternal strength and wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,

Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorned, those only strong!

Thirst of revenge, the powerless will

Still baffled, and yet burning still!

Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know,
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed: the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper's worst calamity.

The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;

And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,-
For aye entempesting anew

The unfathomable hell within

The horror of their deeds to view,

To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me ?
To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love, I love indeed.

LIMBO.

'Tis a strange place, this Limbo-not a Place,
Yet name it so ;-where Time and weary Space
Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing:
Strive for their last crepuscular half-being,-

Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands
Barren and soundless as the measuring sands.

Not mark'd by flit of Shades,-unmeaning they
As moonlight on the dial of the day!

But that is lovely-looks like human Time,-
An old man with a steady look sublime,"
That stops his earthly task to watch the skies;
But he is blind-a statue hath such eyes ;-
Yet having moonward turn'd his face by chance,
Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,

With scant white hairs, with foretop bald and high,
He gazes still, his eyeless face all eye ;—

As 'twere an organ full of silent sight,

His whole face seemeth to rejoice in light!—
Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb-

He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on hin
No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure,
Wall'd round, and made a spirit-jail secure,
By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all,
Whose circumambience doth these ghosts enthrall.
A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation,
Yet that is but a Purgatory curse;

Hell knows a fear far worse,

A fear-a future state;-'tis positive Negation!

NE PLUS ULTRA.

SOLE Positive of Night!
Antipathist of Light!

Fate's only essence! primal scorpion rod—
The one permitted opposite of God!-
Condensed blackness and abysmal storm
Compacted to one sceptre

Arms the Grasp enorm―

The Intercepter

The Substance that still casts the shadow Death!The Dragon foul and fell—

The unrevealable,

And hidden one, whose breath

Gives wind and fuel to the fires of Hell!

Ah! sole despair

Of both th' eternities in Heaven!