Happy Lunar New Year!

Dear Members, Alumni, & Friends of the James Scholar Advisory & Leadership Team (JSALT):

Our venerable organization has changed its name, so the name of our fortnightly Quotemail needs to change, too! J With expanded roles to play in new initiatives for the ACES James Scholar Honors Program, the JSMT became the JSALT on February 17^th following a vote by our Executive Board, and the University of Illinois’s Office of Registered Student Organizations has been notified of, and officially recognized, the change of name. But Quotemail goes on, as before – so here we go! J

Wednesday, February 18^th marked the beginning of the Lunar New Year in the traditional Chinese calendar. The New Year (or Spring Festival) usually occurs on the second New Moon after the Midwinter Solstice (December 21 or 22). This week, the Year of the Sheep begins as the year 4713 dawns in East Asia and around the globe. To celebrate the Lunar New Year, I have selected the poem “Kubla Khan” (by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) to share with you because it celebrates the splendor of medieval China under the aegis of Emperor Kublai Khan (reigned 1260-1294), the grandson of Genghis Khan.

“Kubla Khan” a/k/a “Xanadu” (1816)

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

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 O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As ever 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.

Although I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing it yet, the planet Venus is slowly climbing in the western sky after sunset each evening – another astronomical event! Here’s a poem about Venus as the Evenstar, shining through the late winter gloaming.

“February Twilight”

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

I stood beside a hill

Smooth with new-laid snow,

A single star looked out

From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature

That saw what I could see --

I stood and watched the Evening Star

As long as it watched me.

Happy Lunar New Year to all our subscribers! J

Rob