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 EXPULSION OF THE MONGOLS.
While the descendants of Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, still held the reins of power in China, there was born in humble life in that empire a boy upon whose shoulders fortune had laid the task of driving the foreigners from the soil and restoring to the Chinese their own again. Tradition says that at his birth the room was several times filled with a bright light. However that be, the boy proved to be gifted by nature with a fine presence, lofty views, and an elevated soul, qualities sure to tell in the troubled times that were at hand. When he was seventeen years of age the deaths of his father and mother left him a penniless orphan, so destitute of means that he felt obliged to take the vows of a priest and enter the monastery of Hoangkiose. But the country was now in disorder, rebels were in the field against the Mongol rule, and the patriotic and active-minded boy could not long endure the passive life of a bonze. Leaving the monastery, he entered the service of one of the rebel leaders as a private soldier, and quickly showed such enterprise and daring that his chief not only made him an officer in his force but gave him his daughter in marriage.
The time was ripe for soldiers of fortune. The mantle of Kublai had not fallen on the shoulders of any of his successors, who proved weak and degenerate monarchs, losing the firm hold which the great conqueror had kept upon the realm. It was in the year 1345 that Choo Yuen Chang, to give the young soldier his full name, joined the rebel band. Chunti, one of the weakest of the Mongol monarchs, was now upon the throne, and on every side it was evident that the empire of Kublai was in danger of falling to pieces under this incapable ruler. Fortune had brought its protégé into the field at a critical time.
Choo was not long in proving himself "every inch a soldier." Wherever he fought he was victorious. In a year's time he had under him seven hundred men of his own enlistment, and was appointed the lieutenant of his chief. Soon after the latter died, and Choo took his place at the head of the rebel band. In it enlisted another young man, Suta by name, who was before many years to become China's greatest general and the bulwark of a new dynasty.
Choo was now able to prove his powers on a larger scale. One of his first exploits was the capture of the town of Hoyan, where he manifested a high order of courage and political wisdom in saving the inhabitants from rapine by his ill-paid and hungry soldiers. Here was a degree of self-restraint and power of command which none of the Chinese leaders had shown, and which seemed to point out Choo as the man destined to win in the coming struggle for a rejuvenated China.
Meanwhile a rival came into the field who for a time threw Choo's fortunes into the shade. This was a young man who was offered to the people as a descendant of the dynasty of the Sungs, the emperors whom the Mongol invaders had dethroned. His very name proved a centre of attraction for the people, whose affection for the old royal house was not dead, and they gathered in multitudes beneath his banner. But his claim also aroused the fear of the Mongols, and a severe and stubborn struggle set in, which ended in the overthrow of the youthful Sung and the seeming restoration of the Mongol authority. Yet in reality the war had only cleared the way for a far more dangerous adversary than the defeated claimant of the throne.
Masked by this war, the strength and influence of Choo had steadily grown, and in 1356 he made a daring and masterly move in the capture of the city of Nanking, which gave him control of some of the wealthiest provinces of the land. Here he showed the same moderation as before, preserving the citizens from plunder and outrage, and proving that his only purpose was to restore to China her old native government. With remarkable prudence, skill, and energy he strengthened his position. "The time has now come to drive the foreigners out of China," he said, in a proclamation that was scattered far and wide and brought hosts of the young and daring to his ranks. Elsewhere the so-called Chinese patriots were no better than brigands, all the horrors of war descending upon the districts they occupied and the cities which fell into their hands. But where Choo ruled discipline and security prevailed, and as far as his power reached a firm and orderly government existed.
Meanwhile the Mongols had a host of evils with which to contend. Rebel leaders had risen in various quarters, some of them making more progress than Choo, but winning the execration rather than the love of the people by their rapine and violence. On the contrary, his power grew slowly but surely, various minor leaders joining him, among them the pirate Fangkue Chin, whose exploits had made him a hero to the people of the valley of the Kiang. The events of the war that followed were too many to be here detailed. Suffice it to say that the difficulties of the Mongol emperor gradually increased. He was obliged to meet in battle a Mongol pretender to his throne; Corea rose in arms and destroyed an army sent to subdue it; and Chahan Timour, Chunti's ablest general, fell victim to an assassin. Troubles were growing thick around his throne.