April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

And because I'm wicked behind, and just for fun...fragments of this poem float around in my backbrain. One of the most curious memories I have of college relates to this poem. Though I can't recall specifically, I believe I had recently read or re-read this poem shortly before I was attending a Greek history class. During a slide presentation in the class, the professor said something that sounded like a line from the poem, and a moment later, I had a distinct audible hallucination of someone read the rest of the line, "down to a sunless sea"--I say "hallucination" because I did not simply recite the line in my head, but heard it as clearly as if someone sitting beside me had said it out loud. The number of recognizable hallucinations I've had in my life can be counted on one hand, so it made an impression on me.

It's also important to know this poem so that at picnics and brunches, you can pick up pieces of honeydew, quote that stanza, and confuse the fuck out of your unenlightened brethren.


"Kubla Khan," Samuel Coleridge.


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.