Dear
Friends & Colleagues:
In this
edition of Quotemail, we commemorate two special events taking place in early
February:
1. Monday,
February 8th 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). This
week, the Year of the Monkey begins as the year 4714 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.
2. On
Wednesday, February 3rd, the James Scholar Advisory & Leadership
Team turned ten years old! Our venerable organization was “born” on this date
in 2006, with the support of a dozen ACES James Scholars and Dr. Bill Simmons,
the 3rd ACES Honors Dean (now retired). I recited stanzas from the
following poem at our club’s 5th anniversary celebration in 2011,
and its insightful verses have become a sort of “unofficial anthem” ever since.
The poem encapsulates my own hopes and dreams for the rising generation.
“Ode”
(1874)
By
Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy (1844-1881)
1. We are
the music makers,
And we are
the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering
by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting
by desolate streams;
World-losers
and world-forsakers,
On whom the
pale Moon gleams:
Yet we are
the movers and shakers
Of the
world forever, it seems.
2. With
wonderful deathless ditties,
We build up
the world’s great cities,
And out of
a fabulous story,
We fashion
an empire’s glory:
One man
with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go
forth and conquer a crown;
And three
with a new song’s measure
Can trample
an empire down.
3. We, in
the ages lying
In the
buried past of the Earth,
Built
Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel
itself with our mirth;
And
overthrew them with prophesying
To the old
of the new world’s worth;
For each
age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that
is coming to birth.
4. A breath
of our inspiration
Is the life
of each generation.
A wondrous
thing of our dreaming,
Unearthly,
impossible seeming –
The
soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working
together in one,
Till our
dream shall become their present,
And their
work in the world be done.
5. They had
no vision amazing
Of the
goodly house they are raising.
They had no
divine foreshowing
Of the land
to which they are going:
But on one
man’s soul it hath broken,
A light
that doth not depart,
And his
look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought
flame in another man’s heart.
6. And
therefore today is thrilling
With a past
day’s late fulfilling.
And the
multitudes are enlisted
In the
faith that their fathers resisted,
And,
scorning the dream of tomorrow,
Are
bringing to pass, as they may,
In the
world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream
that was scorned yesterday.
7. But we,
with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless
and sorrowless we!
The glory
about us clinging
Of the
glorious futures we see,
Our souls
with high music ringing;
O men! It
must ever be
That we
dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little
apart from ye.
8. For we
are afar with the dawning
And the
suns that are not yet high,
And out of
the infinite morning
Intrepid
you hear us cry –
How, spite
of your human scorning,
Once more
God's future draws nigh,
And already
goes forth the warning
That ye of
the past must die.
9. “Great
hail!” we cry to the comers
From the
dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us
hither your Sun and your summers,
And renew
our world as of yore;
You shall
teach us your song’s new numbers,
And things
that we dreamt not before;
Yea, in
spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a
singer who sings no more.
“We are
dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. … These are the tools we employ, and we
know many things.”
--
Technomage Elric, in the BABYLON 5 Episode, “The Geometry of
Shadows” (1995)
Until next
time –
Rob :)
