Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 30 -- Down to a Sunless Sea
on which we can voyage whither we will. Their truth is the deepest truth, that of vague human
longings. When we are told that
Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decreed,
Where Alph the sacred river ran,
Through caverns measureless to man,
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA,
we do not feel obliged to consult a list of Tartar rulers, or locate the sources of the river Alph, or
consider the geological formation of limestone caverns. Few will be disturbed by the question
of what particular species of wood louse secreted the honey dew, or the probable number of
bacteria occurring per cubic centimeter in fresh milk of Paradise.
Sir John Colville was a British civil servant and diarist. From
his January 1944 entry, The Fringes of Power: The Incredible
Inside Story of Winston Churchill during World War II (2002),
We had a picnic in glorious country at a place called Pont
Naturel. There was a deep gorge through which a stream
ran, falling from rock to rock into limpid blue pools. Lady
Diana [Cooper] gave one look at it and said Alph! The P.M.
[Churchill] insisted on being carried down and scrambling
over the rocks.
"Alph" is footnoted,
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA.
Coleridge
Lady Diana's exclamation, not otherwise explained, reflects her literary upbringing. The footnote
evidences Sir John's concern that less-gentile readers might not recognize the source.
From Richard Jefferies and his Countryside (1946) by Reginald Arkell,
Into it flowed the River Nile, crawling with alligators, and out of it the Mississippi ran,
Through pastures measureless to man,
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA.
Standing, like stout Cortez, upon some lonely peak, the islands of New Formosa and Serendib
were just visible through the fret and spume of the New Sea. Strange birds and stranger
beasts stirred the rushes that ran down to the water's edge.
From Kathleen Raine's "The Sea of Time and Space, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 20:3/4, July-December, 1957,
The cave is, in fact, the place of generation, where the mystery of the descent of souls takes
place in its womb-like depths, where perpetually flowing waters are the sacred source of
generated existence. The river of life rises in the most secret depths of the world-cave, and like
Alph, the sacred river, runs
Through caverns measureless to man,
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA"
Footnoted,
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