Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 30 -- Down to a Sunless Sea
The Order of the Ages: World History in the Light of a Universal
Cosmogony (2001) by Robert Bolton and Charles Upton tends
toward the occult.
Consequently, this ontological movement has its reverberation
in the subconscious mind, where it well may have inspired
Coleridge's lines:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA.
The "sunless sea" would therefore be the material world in
which the Forms reach their final level of instruction. The
more usual interpretation, that is an allusion to the river of
Paradise manifested, in a relative sense at least, the fount of
realities which make up this world.
Gravelight (2003) by Marion Zimmer Bradley includes,
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA. The phrase circled around inside Wycherly's brain as if it were
the answer to all Life's riddles. DOWN TO THE SUNLESS SEA... It was a line from a poem,
but he no longer remembered which one.
He hadn't brought the flashlight, but it didn't matter. His hand trailed along the curving rock
wall, and Wycherly moved slowly, inexorably, down the stairs. DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA.
All he could hear was water: tricking, roaring, gushing, purling on from nowhere to nowhere,
down here in the dark. Tickling scraps of spider webs brushed his face, and he batted them
away absently.. DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA. He did not have to ask where he was going --
he knew.
For dire maritime statistics, we have Sinking of the Titanic and
Great Sea Disasters (2004) by Logan Marshall.
As long ago as 1841, the steamer President, with 120 people
aboard, crossing from New York to Liverpool in March,
vanished from human ken. In 1854, in the same month, the
City of Glasgow left Liverpool for Philadelphia with 480 souls,
and was never again heard of. In February, 1856, the Pacific,
from Liverpool fro New York, carrying 185 persons, passed
away DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA. In May 1870, the City of
Boston, from that port for Liverpool, mustering 191 souls, met
a similar fate.
Bedlam's Edge (2005) by Mercedes Lackeyand and Rosemary Edghill returns us to the surreal.
Ahead, silver stones were laid into a smooth, broad oath, and the path led to what must be a
palace, although that could not bee seen through the intricate metal gates of a high wall was a
fantastic Arabian Nights entrance, and above the walls dozens of gold-domed minarets. Along
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