Your Ticket to Xanadu
by Joe Schofield
Title
Your Ticket to Xanadu
Artist
Joe Schofield
Medium
Photograph
Description
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - reflections on the opium poppy ...
"So I became a dreamer, and acquired an indisposition to all bodily activity; and I was fretful and inordinately passionate, and as I could not play at anything, and was slothful, I was despised and hated by the boys..but I cannot go thro’ the dreary history – suffice to say, that effects were produced, which acted on me by terror & cowardice of pain and sudden death..."
100's and 100's blooming in my front planter, outside the casement windows ... 04-01-20
Kubla Khan
BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
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.
Uploaded
March 31st, 2020
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Viewed 4,289 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/24/2024 at 8:48 PM
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Comments (44)
Christopher James
One of your peers nominated this image in the 1000 Views on One Image Group's Special Features Nominations For Promotion #24 . Please help your fellow artists by visiting and passing on the love to another artist in the the 1000 Views on One Image Group....L/F/Tw
Diana Mary Sharpton
Nominating this fabulous Poppy artwork for special feature on the 1000 view group..fav/T/p/l/
Christopher James
Congratulation.....your wonderful work has been featured in the 1000 Views on 1 Image Group ..... Feel free to place your featured image in the Features Archive and any Genre specific Archive l/f/p
Steve Henderson
I love your description. The texture and play with light and shadow is excellent.
Joe Schofield replied:
Much appreciated Steve. Was looking to express the digitally altered white poppy as metaphor for the altered mind as Coleridge describes. The brain stem, and the emerging colors begin to spread out and up into the waiting lobes ...
Paul Boizot
Great image! FYI "The Legend of Xanadu" is a single by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich that reached number one in the UK Singles Chart in 1968, and was the group's biggest hit. Not sure if it reached the USA....
Joe Schofield replied:
OMG, Paul...there was a reason it didn’t reach USA...I cued it up and my god it was bad 🤭