64. Kubla Khan by Coleridge - A Friend To Gregory Leadbetter

The Poetry Exchange

In this episode, poet Gregory Leadbetter talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'Kubla Khan' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.​Gregory joined The Poetry Exchange at the Birmingham & Midland Institute - one of our first in-person exchanges since the pandemic.He is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Roy McFarlane.Gregory Leadbetter is a poet and critic. He is the author of two poetry collections, Maskwork (2020) and The Fetch (2016), both with Nine Arches Press, as well as the pamphlet The Body in the Well (HappenStance Press, 2007), and (with photographs by Phil Thomson) Balanuve (Broken Sleep, 2021).His book Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) won the University English Book Prize 2012.The 'gift' reading of Kubla Khan is read by Roy McFarlane.*********Kubla Khanby Samuel Taylor ColeridgeOr, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.So twice five miles of fertile groundWith 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 slantedDown the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!A savage place! as holy and enchantedAs e’er beneath a waning moon was hauntedBy 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 burstHuge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:And mid these dancing rocks at once and everIt flung up momently the sacred river.Five miles meandering with a mazy motionThrough 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 farAncestral 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 dreadFor he on honey-dew hath fed,And drunk the milk of Paradise.

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