2 Memorable Dates in February

Dear Friends & Colleagues:

In this edition of Quotemail, we commemorate two special events taking place in early February:

1. Monday, February 8^th 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 3^rd, 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 3^rd ACES Honors Dean (now retired). I recited stanzas from the following poem at our club’s 5^th 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 :)