Esquecidos - II

Outro grande esquecido, é Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1843), de quem hoje pouco se fala, mas que foi um dos "pais" do romantismo inglês. 

Um dos seus mais belos poemas chama-se "Kubla Khan: or a vision in a dream. A fragment".  Samuel Coleridge terá contado a um amigo, que este poema lhe surgira composto em sonhos, e que assim que acordou sentou-se de imediato a escrevê-lo. Teria sonhado com umas 200 ou 300 linhas, mas enquanto o escrevia alguém o interrompeu, e ele descobriu que o resto do poema se lhe tinha varrido da memória.


O seu título refere-se a Kublai Khan, quinto Grande Khan do Império Mongol e fundador da dinastia Yuan, que dominou uma grande região da Ásia Central durante o século XIII. Neto de Genghis Khan, senhor de um dos maiores impérios da história e o único que não deixou vestígios (o império  também chamado de "Império em Movimento"), Kublai Khan fez de Khanbali (atual Pequim) a sua capital, substituindo a mítica Karakorum, a capital ancestral dos mongóis. 


Kubla Khan

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.


Kubla Khan: or a vision in a dream. A fragment (concluído em 1797 e publicado em 1816)