Tag Archives: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kublai Khan: Yaitopya

 

…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.

From: Kubla Khan by Coleridge ( 1772- 1834)

Princes shall come out of Egypt;
Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.

Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth;
O sing praises unto the Lord; Selah:

To him that rideth upon the heavens of heavens,
which were of old; lo, he doth send out his voice,
and that a mighty voice.

Ascribe ye strength unto God:
his excellency is over Israel,
and his strength is in the clouds.

O God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places:
the God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power
unto his people. Blessed be God.

Psalm 68:31-36     (KJV)

 

Hard Questions

𐩣𐩧𐩨/𐩣𐩧𐩺𐩨

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree . . .
Coleridge: Kubla Khan

Sheba’s wailing Queen laments for Yemen:

Her incense trees are lacerated, scarred.

Sapped for their fragrance, drained of life and marred

Their smoking blood offered up to heaven.

No sinuous rills flow forth to bless the dead;

Beneath her ruined dam no gardens grow;

And Bedouins only sing of what they know

In wastelands of the nomad past. It’s said

That all those spices, all that golden smoke

and irrigated dreams beneath the sand

were just a subtle Solomonic joke.

The yearly weight of gold, the camel-trains,

Are cryptic numbers—chanted in refrains

That only Marib’s phantoms understand.

 

PROMPT #4: write a poem based on an image from a dream.

Hard Questions

𐩣𐩧𐩨/𐩣𐩧𐩺𐩨

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree . . .
Coleridge: Kubla Khan

Sheba’s ghost, lamenting, wails for Yemen:

Her incense trees are lacerated, scarred.

Sapped for their fragrance, drained of life and marred

Their smoking blood offered up to heaven.

No sinuous rills flow forth to bless the dead;

Beneath her ruined dam no gardens grow;

And Bedouins only sing of what they know

In wastelands of the nomad past. It’s said

That all those spices, all that golden smoke

and irrigated dreams beneath the sand

were just a subtle Solomonic joke.

The yearly weight of gold, the camel-trains,

Are cryptic numbers—chanted in refrains

That only Marib’s phantoms understand.

 

PROMPT #4: write a poem based on an image from a dream.

Wheels within Wheels

Ezekiel SHARP

     The histories and political economy of the present and preceding century partake in the general contagion of its mechanic philosophy, and are the product of an unenlivened generalizing Understanding. In the Scriptures they are the living educts of the Imagination, that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the Reason in Images of the Sense, and organizing (as it were) the flux of the Senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the Reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths, of which they are the conductors. These are the Wheels which Ezekiel beheld, when the hand of the Lord was upon him, and he saw visions of God as he sate among the captives by the river Chebar. Whithersoever the Spirit was to go, the wheels went, and thither was their spirit to go: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels also. The truths and the symbols that represent them move in conjunction and form the living chariot that bears up (for us) the throne of the Divine Humanity. Hence, by a derivative, indeed, but not a divided, influence, and though in a secondary yet in more than a metaphorical sense, the Sacred Book is worthily intitled the WORD of GOD. Hence too, its contents present to us the stream of time continuous as Life and a symbol of Eternity, inasmuch as the Past and the Future are virtually contained in the Present.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Statesman’s Manual (1816)

ART IMAGE ©Ted Larson 2007