“Poetry: the best words in the best order.”~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Last year I did a poem survey and began posting the top 100 poems from the survey in chronological order. Then life and laziness and Cybils and Christmas intervened, and I only posted the oldest 34 of the 100 projected poems. But I am determined to use Poetry Friday as an excuse to write about the other 66 poems on list. So, today I’m back with Coleridge.

photo © 2010 Derek Gavey | more info (via: Wylio)
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.

Coleridge was addicted to opium, and he said that this poem came to him in a an opium-induced dream. It’s essentially meaningless, as far as I can tell, even though I’ve read all sorts of interpretations that try to impose meaning on the words. Brown Bear Daughter likes to listen to lots of contemporary songs that remind me of this poem. When I ask her what they mean, she is silent and confounded, but she says the song in question is “catchy.” Kubla Khan is “catchy,” both in imagery and in words. I have pictures in my mind of Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome and and of the caves of ice and of the damsel with the dulcimer and of Coleridge the mad Poet. And I have memorized portions of this poem without trying, just because the sound is so memorable.

“No one should be a rhymer who could be anything better.”~George Gordon, Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

“On the evening of June 11, 1814, Byron attended a party with his friend, James Wedderburn Webster, at the London home of Lady Sarah Caroline Sitwell. Among the other guests was the beautiful Mrs. Anne Beatrix Wilmot, the wife of Byrons first cousin, Sir Robert Wilmot. Her exquisite good looks dazzled Byron and inspired him to write She Walks in Beauty. She was apparently in mourning and wearing black with silver accoutrements (like a starry night).”

Byron is not the right man to be writing of “a heart whose love is innocent” as far as I can tell. He once said, “Every day confirms my opinion on the superiority of a vicious life — and if Virtue is not its own reward I don’t know any other stipend annexed to it.” He rather reminds me of Oscar Wilde, fond of elegance and of shocking people both with his actions and his observations. He is said to have had sex with over 300 women, and probably several minors, both boys and girls, a fact which takes some of the beauty out of the poem for me. I know one is supposed to dissociate the writer from his work and enjoy the poetry for what it is, but I can’t do that with either Byron or Shelley. They were both good-for-nothing cads, and the flavor of their lives gets into their poetry somehow.

Anyway, it might be a lovely poem if no one had ever told me anything about the poet.

You can read more about Byron if you’re so inclined:
The Life and Work of Lord Byron at Englishhistory.net
George Gordon, Lord Byron: Byromania

“Reduced to its simplest and most essential form, the poem is a song. Song is neither discourse nor explanation.”~Octavio Paz

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
He staid not for brake, and he stopp’d not for stone,
He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So boldly he enter’d the Netherby Hall,
Among bride’s-men, and kinsmen, and brothers and all:
Then spoke the bride’s father, his hand on his sword,
(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,)
“O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?”

“I long woo’d your daughter, my suit you denied; —
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide —
And now I am come, with this lost love of mine,
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.”

The bride kiss’d the goblet: the knight took it up,
He quaff’d off the wine, and he threw down the cup.
She look’d down to blush, and she look’d up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar, —
“Now tread we a measure!” said young Lochinvar.

So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
That never a hall such a gailiard did grace;
While her mother did fret, and her father did fume
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;
And the bride-maidens whisper’d, “’twere better by far
To have match’d our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.”

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reach’d the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
“She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.

There was mounting ‘mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

This poem is actually an excerpt from Scott’s longer poem Marmion. Lochinvar is a real place, a reservoir in southern Scotland. There was a silent movie made in 1923 in the UK (starring no one I ever heard of) based on Young Lochinvar. I rather think the story might require a lot of padding to make a full length movie, but maybe silent movie era films were shorter than those of today.