Hearsee

“A Vision in a Dream,” (aka “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In the summer of the year 1797,
the Author, then in ill health,
had retired to a lonely farm-house
between Porlock and Linton,
on the Exmoor confines
of Somerset and Devonshire.

In consequence of a slight indisposition,
an anodyne had been prescribed,
from the effects of which he fell asleep
in his chair at the moment that
he was reading the following sentence,
or words of the same substance,
in Purchas’s Pilgrimage:

A paved road in Exmoor,
near the confines of Somerset and Devonshire,
also travelled by the Person from Porlock
“Here the Khan Kubla commanded
a palace to be built, and
a stately garden thereunto.
And thus ten miles of fertile ground
were inclosed with a wall.”
The Author continued for about
three hours in a profound sleep,
at least of the external senses,
during which time he has
the most vivid confidence,
that he could not have composed less than
from two to three hundred lines;
if that indeed can be called composition
in which all the images rose up before him
as things, with a parallel production of
the correspondent expressions,
without any sensation
or consciousness of effort.

On awakening he appeared to himself
to have a distinct recollection of the whole,
and taking his pen, ink, and paper,
instantly and eagerly wrote down
the lines that are here preserved.

At this moment he was unfortunately
called out by a person on business from Porlock,
and detained by him above an hour,
and on his return to his room, found,
to his no small surprise and mortification,
that though he still retained
some vague and dim recollection
of the general purport of the vision,
yet, with the exception of some eight
or ten scattered lines and images,
all the rest had passed away
like the images on the surface of
a stream into which a stone has
been cast, but, alas! without
the after restoration of the latter!

Leave a Comment

Filed under creative captures, technology

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *