Hello
everyone –
Saturday,
January 28th marks 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 Winter Solstice (December 21 or 22). Next Saturday,
the Year of the Rooster begins as the year 4715 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, or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment” (1816)
By
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
[Coleridge’s
Preface to the Poem]
The
following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and
deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], and, as far as the Author's own opinions are
concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any
supposed poetic merits.
In
the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a
lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of
Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne
had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at
the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same
substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage : "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a
palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of
fertile ground were inclosed with a wall." The Author continued for about
three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which
time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than
from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in
which all the images rose up before him as things , with a parallel production
of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of
effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of
the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down
the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called
out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour,
and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and
mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of
the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten
scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the
surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the
after restoration of the latter!
Then all the charm
Is broken -- all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other. Stay awhile,
Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes--
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo, he stays,
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror.
Yet
from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently
purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to
him. Sameron adion aso [in Greek]: but the to-morrow is yet to come.
As
a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different
character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease.
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.
The
planet Venus is riding high in the southwestern sky after sunset each evening –
another astronomical event! Here’s a poem about Venus as the Evenstar, shining
through the late winter gloaming. It’s well worth a look in the early evening
sky! :)
“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! :)
Rob
