|
|
Thomas Maurice
1. Sacred river
Coleridge made notes on a passage from Maurice a few pages after the
following paragraph.
He may have read this text, which describes the festival of Osiris and Isis,
the Egyptian divinities presiding over the Nile, the sacred river.
Did this passage serve to re-enforce the holiness of the river?
Text
The whole of the annual magnificent festival of Osiris and Isis was in the
most pointed manner allusive to the influence of the SUN and MOON upon the
earth….
To the MOON, or Isis, they were by no means ungrateful for affording, by
night, her kindly ray to conduct the mariner…
over the boundless ocean, and the benighted traveler over deserts of sands…
as well as her immediate utility in swelling the waters of that sacred
river, whose annual inundations were the perpetual and abundant source of
plenty.
(Maurice's capitalization, Maurice, p. 102). |
 Other sources
William Bartram |