Ellen Coit Elliott

“ Beauty has a thousand homes, she is captive never:
Daughter of eternity she will not cabined be.
A word she hath, a look she hath, joy she hath forever,
When she shines for Kubla Khan or gleams in dreams for me.
We whimper like a sleeping child lest fairy Xanadu
Should once again, as once before, vanish beside the sea;
We wake and know the bubble gone, yet all the glory true,
And Beauty leading o'er the waves—a Flying Victory.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1928. ”

“ Copyright, 1916
By Ellen Coit Elliott
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
PRESS
I
THE DREAM
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
⁠A stately pleasure-dome decree;
It vanished or ever it began:
A singer glimpsed it in a vision
And then the miracle of rare device,
The sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice,
The greenery enfolded spots, the fields elysian,
Sank to a sunless sea.
The sighs of mourners breathe across the courts
⁠And faint along the aisles of Xanadu;
The lost, the lost is found, the vision lives again,
⁠But, sweet and fleeting, vanishes anew. ”

“ There's a fountain in the Court of Fairy Tales:
Beauty thrones upon the Beast and water pours,
Down it slips and slides and shivers,
O'er the circling brim it quivers,
Thin as melting ice in spring,
Clear as sheets of elfin glass,
Drops in crystal filigree,
And flashes in the basin as you pass.
⁠Curving curbs the waters stay,
⁠Wrought with figures ashen-grey. ”