Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 31 -- Poems for Subterranean Sailors
CHAPTER 31
POEMS FOR SUBTERRANEAN SAILORS
"Kubla Kahn," as we noted in the previous chapter, stands high in English poetry, but there's a
great amount of other verse about underground rivers. We'll assemble just a sample.
"Endymion" (1818) by John Keats speaks of underground rivers.
Through caves, and palaces of mottled ore,
Gold dome, and crystal wall, and turquois floor,
Black polish’d porticos of awful shade,
And, at the last, a diamond balustrade,
Leading afar past wild magnificence,
Spiral through ruggedest loopholes, and thence
Stretching across a void, then guiding o’er
Enormous chasms, where, all foam and roar,
Streams subterranean tease their granite beds;
Then heighten’d just above the silvery heads.
"The Close of the Year" (1840) by George D Prentice,
Weep not that Time
Is passing on -- it will ere long reveal
A brighter ere to the nations. -- Hark!
Along the vales and mountains of the earth
There is a deep, portentous murmuring,
Like the swift rush of subterranean streams.
We've a pair from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. "To a Child" (1841) wasn't what today is
known as juvenile poetry.
Freighted with hope and fear;
As upon subterranean streams,
In caverns unexplored and dark,
Men sometimes launch a fragile bark,
Laden with flickering fire,
And watch its swift-receding beams,
Until at length they disappear,
And in the distant dark expire.
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