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HomePoems > Kubla Khan > Sources > William Bartram > 8. Alligator Hole                           

 

 

1. The Serpentine Rivulet

2. Isle of Palms

3. Gordonia Lasianthus

4. Swelling Green Knoll

5. Crystal Fountain

6. Subterranean River

7. Manatee Springs

8. Alligator Hole

William Bartram:

8. Alligator Hole

Here's another fountain, making the earth shake, rushing up out of the ground, then forming a river that meanders down a valley, for miles, leaving fragments of rocks tossed onto its banks, until it sinks into the ground.

Lowes points out that Coleridge had made notes on a passage about a savanna crane, some 17 pages earlier in Bartram, so "we may be certain he read" about the Alligator Hole.

That's what Ernest Hartley Coleridge argued in a paper read before the Royal Society of Literature, in 1906 ("William Bartram's description of the Alligator Hole," Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Second Series, Volume XXVII (1906), p. 81).

Therefore, Lowes argues, "Certain striking details from one or two of these other lively descriptions had fixed themselves in Coleridge's memory." 369

 

Text

On a sudden, he was astonished by an inexpressible rushing noise, like a mighty hurricane or thunder storm, and looking around, he saw the earth overflow by torrents of water…

Attended with a terrific noise and tremor of the earth….

He immediately resolved to proceed for the place from whence the noise seemed to come, and soon came in sight of the incomparable fountain, and saw, with amazement, the floods rushing upwards many feet high, and the expanding waters…spreading themselves far and near..

It continued to jet and flow in this manner for several days, forming a large…river, descending and following the various…windings of the valley, for the distance of seven or eight miles, emptying itself into a vast savanna, where there was a…sink which received its waters…At places, where ridges or a swelling bank….opposed its course and fury, are vast heaps of fragments of rocks, white chalk, stones and pebbles, which were…thrown into the lateral vallies. Bartram 239-40

 
Word Line # Line Sources for word
Earth

18

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing

 Bartram 2
 Bartram 6
 Bartram 8
 Bernier 2
 Bernier 5
 Bruce 1
 Burnet 2
 Kircher 1
 Maurice 1

 Milton 2

 Milton 4
 Pausanias
 Seneca 1
 Seneca 2
 Wollstonecraft

Far 29 And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far  Bartram 8
 Bernier 3
Flung up

24

It flung up momently the sacred river

 Bartram 5
 Bartram 8

 Strabo 2

Fountain

19

A mighty fountain momently was forced

 Bartram 4
 Bartram 5
 Bartram 6

 Bartram 7

 Bartram 8
 Beckford
 Bernier 2
 Bernier 4
 Bruce 1
 Bruce 2

 Bruce 3

 Burnet 1
 Herodotus
 Maurice 2
 Milton 4
 Pausanias
 Rennell
 Seneca 1
 Virgil
 Wollstonecraft

 

34

From the fountain and the caves

 Bartram 4
 Bartram 5
 Bartram 6

 Bartram 7

 Bartram 8
 Beckford
 Bernier 2
 Bernier 4
 Bruce 1
 Bruce 2

 Bruce 3

 Burnet 1
 Herodotus
 Maurice 2
 Milton 4
 Pausanias
 Rennell
 Seneca 1
 Virgil
 Wollstonecraft

Fragments

21

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail

 Bartram 5
 Bartram 8
 Bruce 7

Mazy

25

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

 Bartram 8
 Kircher 4
 Milton 4

Meandering

25

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

 Bartram 1
 Bartram 5
 Bartram 8
 Bernier 5
 Bruce 4
 Kircher 3
 Kircher 4
 Milton 4

Mighty 19 A mighty fountain momently was forced Bartram 8
Kircher 1
Pausanias
Miles

6

So twice five miles of fertile ground

 Bartram 5
 Bartram 8
 Bruce 4
 Purchas 1

 

25

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

 Bartram 5
 Bartram 8
 Bruce 4
 Purchas 1

Rocks

23

And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

 Bartram 5
 Bartram 6
 Bartram 7
 Bartram 8

 Bruce 2
 Bruce 7

 Collins
 Milton 6
 Wollstonecraft
 

Sank

28

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean

 Bartram 5
 Bartram 8

 Strabo 2

Saw 38 In a vision once I saw  Bartram 8
 Bernier 3
 Purchas 4
Tumult

28

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean

 Bartram 8
 Bruce 3
 Purchas 2

 

29

And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

 Bartram 8
 Bruce 3
 Purchas 2

 

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