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4. Swelling Green Knoll |
William Bartram:
4. Swelling Green Knoll
Lowes figures that Coleridge read the following description of a green hill
and a fragrant grove next to an "enchanting" fountain bubbling up in a
spring, because, in Bartram, the passage appears just eight pages after the
purple prose about the Isle of Palms.
Lowes sees "associative links" between the two passages, particularly the
greenery and the aromatic groves of magnolias, and orange trees.
Lowes quotes citations in Coleridge's Note Book and one of Coleridge's
letters as evidence that before Kubla Khan the two green and fragrant spots
full of trees and flowers had coalesced in Coleridge's memory.
Text I seated myself upon a swelling green knoll, at the head of the chrystal
bason. Near me, on the left, was a point or projection of an entire grove of
the aromatic Illisium Floridanum; on my right and all around behind me, was
a fruitful Orange grove, with Palms and Magnolias interspersed; in front,
just under my feet was the inchanting and amazing chrystal fountain.
--Bartram, p. 165.
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 Other sources
William
Beckford
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