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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! ...