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Thomas Burnet
2. The dark pipes of the earth
Sure, Coleridge read Burnet, and took inspiration from him. But is this a
particularly compelling example?
Lowes describes Burnet's vision of great flood:
Beneath the hollow shell of the earth lay, from the beginning, the waters of
the great abyss. At the deluge the fountains of the deep were broken up and
the shattered frame of the earth sank beneath the rush of the ascending
floods. Subterranean rivers still pursue their way "through the dark pipes
of the earth" and beneath us still are gathered up, in subterranean lakes
and seas, the cataracts of the abyss. And at the end, when the earth shall
melt with fervent heat, the waters that are under the earth, pent up and
turned to steam, will lend their shattering aid again, to bring about the
last catastrophe.
Do the dark pipes really appear in Kubla Khan? I doubt it. Did this suggest
the way the River Alph descended into a sunless sea, then rose again in
fountains? Perhaps. But that hypothesis requires quite a stretch.
Text
Through the dark pipes of the earth. |
 Other sources
William Bartram |