Xanadu and the chasm

In Xanadu, Kubla Khan orders a stately pleasure-dome to be built. There, the sacred river Alph runs through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.

Walls and towers enclose ten miles of fertile ground, with gardens bright with winding streams, incense-bearing trees, and ancient forests.

Beside the gardens lies a deep romantic chasm: savage, holy and enchanted, the kind of place haunted by a woman wailing for her demon-lover beneath a waning moon.

From this chasm a mighty fountain bursts out, flinging up huge rocks like hail, and throwing up the sacred river. The river winds for five miles through wood and dale, then reaches the caverns and sinks in tumult to a lifeless ocean.

Amid that tumult, Kubla hears ancestral voices prophesying war. The shadow of the dome floats on the waves: 'a sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice', a miracle of rare device.

The poem sets order (the walled gardens, the dome) beside wildness (the savage chasm and the fountain).