Cambridge, Goodbye Again
--after Xu Zhimo
I’ll leave in quietude,
as quietly as I came;
I wave silent farewell
to clouds in the western sky.
Riverside’s gold willows
are young brides at twilight;
their reflections shimmer
but remain fixed in my heart.
The weed that grows in sludge
sways, sways just beneath the ripple
of the gentle Cambridge waves.
O, if I could be that weed!
The pool in the elmtree shade
holds not water but a rainbow;
shattered among duckweed
is the dream sediment’s spectrum.
A dream? Just poling upstream
To where the grass is thicker;
boat full-loaded with starlight
and singing aloud with me.
But I cannot loudly sing,
departure music must be muted;
my summer bugs stay silent.
Cambridge is too quiet tonight!
I’ll leave in stillness,
as quietly as I came.
Flapping my sleeves like flags
won’t drive any clouds away.
King's Parade, Cambridge -- Rebecca Stark
"University" is derived from the Latin term "universitas magistrorum et scholarium" (community of teachers and scholars) coined by the Università di Bologna to describe the corporations of students and masters. Most medieval universities evolved from Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools which appeared as early as the 6th century. Probably in 1088 the Università di Bologna arose around "nations" (mutual aid societies of foreign students grouped by nationality) for protection against city laws which imposed collective punishment on foreigners for the crimes and debts of their countrymen. These students then hired scholars from the city to teach them. In time the various "nations" formed a larger association, the universitas. The second-oldest university is the University of Oxford, which may have been formed between 1096 and 1167, when students associated together on the basis of geographical origins into two "nations" representing the North (Boreales, who included the English people from north of the River Trent and the Scots) and the South (Australes, who included English people from south of the Trent, the Irish, and the Welsh). It grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the Université de Paris ("the Sorbonne," after its historical house), which emerged ca. 1150 as a corporation associated with the cathedral school of Notre Dame de Paris; it was organized on the basis of four nations (the French, Normans, Picards (which included West and East Flemish, Brabantian. and Limburgish speakers of German), and English, though after the Hundred Years' War, the English nation was replaced by the Germans, which continued to include Scots as well as Slavs). In 1209 two Oxford scholars were hanged by the town authorities for the death of a woman, without consulting the ecclesiastical authorities, who would normally take precedence (and probably pardon the scholars) because they were in conflict with the king. The University of Oxford went into suspension in protest, and an association of scholars fled northeast to Cambridge, which already had a scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation due to the nearby bishopric church of Ely. The 1209 incident led to the funding of the University of Cambridge, the third-or-fourth-oldest surviving university. (The two ancient English universities continue to share many common features and are often referred to jointly as "Oxbridge.")
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