Contents ( click to get there)
(Sorry - no GenAm version of Oz yet)
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights of the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breats and ah! bright wings.
Sorry, no Gen Am version of God's grandeur yet ...
Sorry, Virginia's not in GenAm yet ...
No GenAm Kubla yet ... the milk of Paradise or of Pairadise?
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W.H Auden: Journey to Iceland ----------- Back to contents ...
Each traveller prays Let me be far from any
physician, every port has its name for the sea,
the citiless, the corroding, the sorrow,
and North means to all Reject.
These plains are for ever where cold creatures are hunted
and on all sides: white wings flicker and flaunt;
under a scolding flagthe lover
of islands may see at last,
in outline, his limited hope, as he nears a glitter
of glacier, sterile immature mountains intense
in the abnormal northern day, and a river's
fan-like polyp of sand.
Here let the citizen, then, find natural marvels,
a horse-shoe ravine, an issue of steam from a cleft
in the rock, and rocks, and waterfalls brushing
the rocks, and among the rock birds;
the student of prose and conduct places to visit,
the site of a church where a bishop was put in a bag,
the bath of a great historian, the fort where
an outlaw dreaded the dark,
remember the doomed man thrown by his horse and crying
Beautiful is the hillside. I will not go,
the old woman confessing He that I loved the
best, to him I was worst.
Europe is absent: this is an island and should be
a refuge, where the affections of its dead can be bought
by those whose dreams accuse them of being
spitefully alive, and the pale
from too much passion of kissing feel pure in its deserts.
But is it, can they, as the world is and can lie?
A narrow bridge over a torrent,
a small farn under a crag
are natural Settings for the jealousies of a province:
a weak vow of fidelity is made at a cairn,
within the indigenous figure on horseback
on the bridle-path down by the lake
his blood moves also by furtive and crooked inches,
asks all our questions: Where is the homage? When
shall justice be done? Who is against me?
Why am I always alone?
Out time has no favourite suburb, no local features
are tthose of the young for whom all wish to care;
its promise is only a promise, the fabulous
country impartially far.
Tears fall in all the rivers: again some driver
pulls on his gloves and in a blinding snowstorm starts
upon a fatal journey, again some writer
runs howling to his art.
S.T.Coleridge: Kubla Khan
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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!
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 dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
If you'd like a text copy of these transcriptions, mail me at peturk@rhi.hi.is and let me know. You 'll need my phonetics font for it, and I'm afraid I've only got a Mac version, but it's free for the asking.
Find any misprints? Show me how good you are.
