5 KUBLA KHAN; OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. A FRAGMENT. IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan Through caverns measureless to man So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round : But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted 15 As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced; 20 Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, 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 30 Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Where was heard the mingled measure 35 It was a miracle of rare device, 40 45 50 A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Could I revive within me, Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 't would win me, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! LORD BYRON. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. GEORGE GORDON, Lord Byron, was born in London January 22, 1788. He was not in the direct line of the peerage, and when his father died in 1791, he was a poor boy, left in the care of a mother who was incompetent to give him a judicious training. When, by a succession of deaths in the family, he came at ten years of age into possession of a title and of the family estate of Newstead Abbey, he was already warped in mind as he was somewhat deformed in body, being lame from a club-foot. He had his schooling at Harrow, where he was known as a shy, somewhat ungovernable, passionate boy, who formed ardent attachments and took a fierce delight in such sport as he could engage in. It was said that he chose the most ferocious animals for his pets, and he was violent in his expressions. He had, indeed, a large, rich nature, which seemed constantly to be coming under unhappy influences, and from an early day he had a way of hiding his best emotions under a show of indifference and swagger, so that what was at first a kind of mask became in the end almost his familiar countenance. He passed from Harrow to Trinity College, Cambridge. Both at school and in college he found an outlet for his moods in verse; this was called out by the attachments he formed and by special occasions, for he always seemed to be swayed by emotions which circumstance or adventure brought to the surface. He published a collection of these |