A bit of poetry

[eviltigerlily]

"Kubla Khan" is one of my favourite poems. Normally I'm not a big fan of Coleridge, but I just love this poem. The imagery is beautiful, but it's the musicality of the poem that appeals to me most, praticulary this part:

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.

Comments

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

I am a massive poetry fan. That one's on the ancient poetry page I made back in college. Have you read Dirk Gently's Holisitic Detective Agency? Douglas Adams's take on Kubla Kahn...

(Chris's expression in your userpic! It should not be legal to be so cute. No.)

[eviltigerlily.livejournal.com]

We should have him arrested. And chained. And possibly oiled :D
The icon is by spacemonkeyluvn.

Of course I read "Dirk Gently's Holisitic Detective Agency"! I love it. I think it may be the book that made me love this poem so much. I have read it before, but the book made me pay closer attention and fall in love with it, even though, like I said I don't hugely adore Coleridge.
I love poetry. Ah, Shakespearian Sonnets! I love those! I just love Shakespeare period.

Are you familiar with this one:

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O, uncontroulable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.



Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?