Kubla Khan
BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
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 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 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.


Oh that naughty Lord Byron making such an *** of Sam!

Shall gentle COLERIDGE pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?
Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
Yet still Obscurity's a welcome guest.
If Inspiration should her aid refuse
To him who takes a Pixy for a muse,
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
The bard who soars to elegize an ***:
So well the subject suits his noble mind,
He brays, the Laureate of the long-eared kind.

***
Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was born Augusta Ada Byron, the only legitimate child of Annabella Milbanke and the poet Lord Byron. Her mother, Lady Byron, had mathematical training (Byron called her his 'Princess of Parallelograms') and insisted that Ada, who was tutored privately, study mathematics too - an unusual education for a woman.

Ada met Babbage at a party in 1833 when she was seventeen and was entranced when Babbage demonstrated the small working section of the Engine to her. She intermitted her mathematical studies for marriage and motherhood but resumed when domestic duties allowed. In 1843 she published a translation from the French of an article on the Analytical Engine by an Italian engineer, Luigi Menabrea, to which Ada added extensive notes of her own. The Notes included the first published description of a stepwise sequence of operations for solving certain mathematical problems and Ada is often referred to as 'the first programmer'. The collaboration with Babbage was close and biographers debate the extent and originality of Ada's contribution.

Perhaps more importantly, the article contained statements by Ada that from a modern perspective are visionary. She speculated that the Engine 'might act upon other things besides number... the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent'. The idea of a machine that could manipulate symbols in accordance with rules and that number could represent entities other than quantity mark the fundamental transition from calculation to computation. Ada was the first to explicitly articulate this notion and in this she appears to have seen further than Babbage. She has been referred to as 'prophet of the computer age'. Certainly she was the first to express the potential for computers outside mathematics. In this the tribute is well-founded.

Dancing, sayeth Philip Stubbes in 1583, is altogether a “horrible vice”. In his infamous work THE ANATOMIE OF ABUSES.

Stubbes ranted.... “what clipping, what culling, what kissing and bussing, what smouching and slabbering of one another: what filthy groping and unclean handling is not practised everywhere in these dancings... provoketh lust, and the fires of lust and once conceived…burst forth into the open action of whoredom and fornication.”

So dancing allowed certain libertien to be taken with the opposite *** but the dance that scandalised the then known world was the one and only ***** Volta  -which of course made it a hit with the Elizabethan court. It had the inbuilt indecency of highly intimate contact between man and woman.

A guide to the dance advised that “if you wish to dance the volta…you must place your right hand on the damsel’s back, and the left below her bust, and, by pushing her with your right thigh beneath her buttocks, turn her”.

Slow and stately movements  ruled the roost before the volta made its entrance.

Totally condemned throughout Europe among certain circles. In his 1592 work,‘A Godly Treatise on the Ungodly Dance’, Johann von Münster fumed that even kings were promoting the wicked dance:

“In this dance the dancer with a leap takes the young lady – who also comes to him with a high jump to the measures of the music – and grasps her in an unseemly place…With horror I have often seen this dance at the Royal Court of King Henry III in the year 1582, and together with other honest persons have frequently been amazed that such a lewd and unchaste dance, in which the King in person was first and foremost, should be officially permitted and publicly practiced.”

A century later, Johannes Praetorius, condemned the volta in his book on the practices of witchcraft, Blockes-Berges Verrichtung. He wrote:

“A new galliard, the volta ...a foreign dance in which they seize each other in lewd places and which was brought to France by conjurors from Italy… a whirling dance full of scandalous, beastly gestures and immodest movements…responsible for the misfortune that innumerable murders and miscarriages are brought about by it”.

In 1575, poor old Dudley still had hopes of winning Elizabeth and he staged an elaborate three week festival that was pretty much his last ditch do or die effort to impress her.

Her time was completely filled up with all of her favorite passions, elaborately choreographed.;There was dancing, riding, and hunting; as well as more public festivals and pageants

The cost was staggering – well over £1000/day, and was on a scale never before seen in England

There was one where a mechanical dolphin rose out from the water and concealed within were musicians and a singer

.A huge fireworks display lit up one night, there were new gardens with fountains built, and Elizabeth stayed in the new state apartments that Leicester built.

Even though Dudley was unsuccessful in his quest to win Elizabeth, the festival he created was the talk of the Tudor world for some time.

Now all we needed was a time machine and Hello magazine. Oh and one hairy Irish poet!

VERRE D'EAU

il pleut dans
le verre d'eau oubliée
remplir à craquer

le verre vide maintenant
renversée par la pluie féroce
scintillant dans le soleil

une coccinelle rampe à l'intérieur
cet univers de verre
le chant des oiseaux tombe sur l'herbe mouillée

Key of Heaven is only one of the names for the common cowslip( Primula Veris ). It travels under other names such as cuy lippe, herb peter, paigle, peggle, key flower, fairy cups, petty mulleins, crewel, buckles, palsywort, plumrocks and tittypines. There was also a recipe for a delicious sparkling cowslip wine. Alas the book was too expensive for my means and I was more interested in the cowslip dying between Milton's lines and the woman who was Petrella back in the days of the year 19 and 22! I no longer remember how to make cowslip wine and I never did.

So my little one watches THE KING AND I..and who does she want to be? Why Yul of course. She goes around with her bathing cap on to mimic his baldness and with her hands disdainfully on her hips saying "etc., etc., etc.!" She also is under the belief that "etc., etc., etc.!" is some form of number and can be used when you can only count to ten and you need to count countless stars.

I went up into an attic to call mien host's son who had his playroom here. There was so much sunshine in the room I didn't see him stuck in a corner playing with a spinning top. At the dead centre of the room was a black cat with a white question mark on its forehead and an unopened ball of wool with two 4mm knitting needles sticking out of its head as if it were a "stunningly soft" angora alien or a very wooly old fashioned TV set with rabbit ears! I just loved the sound of the colour of the wool - SCHULANA ANGORA DUNKELVIOLETT( 021 ).  

His goodly Mutter  had been about to knit a fluffy something or other  for him as he played at her feet but had to leave her little knüddelpuddel as she called him.  A name that sounded like a doodle scrawled upon the air!

The cat and ball had become as one and as I carried down her little liebling in my arms and a cat( still asleep )on my shoulder he told me: "Ich liebe dich mit ganzem Herzen!"

As we departed the wool cried out to me in its dunkelviolett voice: "Hey what about me!" I told it I will get back to it in about 30 years....this poem is that promise!

A stickyback is what we called burrs which do hitchhike on the backs of cows and small blue jumpered bows.

The nameless woman is of course that old tale of Étaín Echraide changed into such changings by her husband Midir's former wife Fuamnach in that wondrous tale of various incarnations and reincarnations.

So she actually is changed to water on a pool then a worm then a fly which is blown away and falls into a cup of wine that is drunk by a lady who then gives birth to...another Étaín. And so...it goes.

As a little boy making snowmen bigger than my self I was surprised to learn that even the legendary heroes got up to the same thing! Their women peeing through it was a different thing altogether. These are the flotsam and jetsam of tales told by my sisters that somehow find their way back into my mind even though I have gone through many incarnations since...the present one being of course...the auld fella I am this day.

The title comes from that old Irish school chestnut by Mr. Mangan.

King Cahal Mór Of The Wine-Red Hand


I WALKED entranced
Through a land of Morn:
The sun, with wondrous excess of light,
Shone down and glanced
Over seas of corn
And lustrous gardens aleft and right.
Even in the clime
Of resplendent Spain,
Beams no such sun upon such a land;
But it was the time,
’T was in the reign,
Of Cahal Mór of the Wine-red Hand.

Anon stood nigh
By my side a man
Of princely aspect and port sublime
Him queried I—
“Oh, my Lord and Khan,
What clime is this, and what golden time?”
When he—“The clime
Is a clime to praise,
The clime is Erin’s, the green and bland;
And it is the time,
These be the days,
Of Cahal Mór of the Wine-red Hand.”

Then saw I thrones
And circling fires,
And a Dome rose near me, as by a spell,
Whence flowed the tones
Of silver lyres,
And many voices in wreathèd swell;
And their thrilling chime
Fell on mine ears
As the heavenly hymn of an angel-band—
“It is now the time
These be the years,
Of Cahal Mór of the Wine-red Hand.”

I sought the hall,
And behold!—a change
From light to darkness, from joy to woe!
Kings, nobles, all,
Looked aghast and strange;
The minstrel group sate in dumbest show!
Had some great crime
Wrought this dread amaze,
This terror? None seemed to understand
’Twas then the time,
We were in the days,
Of Cahal Mór of the Wine-red Hand.

I again walked forth;
But lo! the sky
Showed flecked with blood, and an alien sun
Glared from the north,
And there stood on high,
Amid his shorn beams, a skeleton!
It was by the stream
Of the castled Maine,
One Autumn eve, in the Teuton’s land,
That I dreamed this dream
Of the time and reign
Of Cahal Mór of the Wine-red Hand.

James Clarence Mangan

An Elegy

SHE fell away in her first ages spring,
Whil’st yet her leaf was green, and fresh her rinde,
And whil’st her branch fair blossoms forth did bring,
She fell away against all course of kind.
For age to die is right, but youth is wrong;         5
She fell away like fruit blown down with wind.
Weep, Shepherd! weep, to make my undersong.

Yet fell she not as one enforc’d to die,
Ne died with dread and grudging discontent,
But as one toil’d with travail down doth lie,
So lay she down, as if to sleep she went,
And closed her eyes with careless quietness;
The whiles soft death away her spirit sent,
And soul assoyld from sinful fleshliness.

Edmud Spenser( 1552?-1599 )

She said that all the time she was up and down to Ceiling Land this fragment of Spenser kept going through her head like a refrain.

"...an undersong of sense which none beside the poetic mind can comprehend.”

Landor.

She was the only person I actually knew who had this experience...I was fascinated by it...she just thought of it as "well there ya go" and was more intrigued by the fact that the Spencer lines kept going around in her head like a refrain and it bugged her that she couldn't remember where it was from....for her to know was more important than the actual dying.

Time of utter desolation! Last three essays and my dissertation to put in and I break up with my dearly beloved. Now...it all means...nothing at all. These were the days of my Brixton living and as i attempted an attempt at paying attention to my rather shakey Shakespeare a car stranded at a traffic lights subwoofered Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's THE MESSAGE through and through me almost unlocking the plates of my skull!

"Don't- push- me- cause- I'm...close -to- the- edge:
I'm- trying- not- to- lose- my- head!

Say wha?!

It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under!"

The Furious Fives glossing de Shakes for me man as this poem snuk into my head on tippytoes!