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HomePoems > Kubla Khan > Sources > Thomas Maurice > 2. Cave of ice                         

 

 

1. Sacred river

2. Cave of ice

3. A Persian pavilion

Thomas Maurice

2. Cave of ice

Only a few pages intervene between the description of the Nile and Maurice's description of Kashmir, in which he discovers a giant ice sculpture in a cave. Coleridge makes a note for his hymn to the moon.

                   Hymns Moon
In a cave in the mountains of Cashmere an Image of Ice, which makes its appearance thus--two days before the new moon there appears a bubble of Ice which increases in size every day till the 15th day, at which it is an ell or more in height: then as the moon decreases, the Image does also till it vanishes.
Read the whole 107th page of Maurice's Indostan.
--Note Book, Archiv p. 363, quoted in Lowes, p. 379

That ice sculpture, appearing and then disappearing in a cave, may have suggested the caves of ice in Kubla Khan, nearby fountains that are sacred. That nexus of imagery may have poured into Coleridge's poem, because the image itself is so unusual, and the description is so vivid. Lowes is certain of it.

The Image of Ice, accordingly, in the cave in the mountains of Cashmere, sank below the threshold as an atome crochu.  And its particular 'hook of the memory'--that potentiality of junction which it carried with it--was the sacred river.  And through their association with the sacred river the caves of ice were drawn into the dream:

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man...

Other sources

William Bartram
William Beckford
F. Bernier
James Bruce
Thomas Burnet
William Collins
Herodotus
Athanasius Kircher
Jerome Lobo
John Milton
Pausanias
Samuel Purchas
Major James Rennell
Seneca
Strabo
Virgil

Mary Wollstonecraft

 

Text

I have already noticed the remarkable circumstance of 360 fountainssacred to the moon, at Kehrah, a town in Cashmere; Cashmere, probably the most early residence of the Brahmins, and the theatre of the purest rites of their theology.

In a cave of the same mountains subah a very singular phenomenon is said, in the Ayeen Akbery, at certain periods to make its appearance….In this cave, says Abul Fazil, is sometimes to be seen an image of ice, called Amernaut, which is holden in great veneration. The image makes its appearance after the following manner; In a cave in the mountains of Cashmere an Image of Ice, which makes its appearance thus--two days before the new moon there appears a bubble of Ice which increases in size every day till the 15th day, at which it is an ell or more in height: then as the moon decreases, the Image does also till it vanishes. --Maurice, pp. 106-7.

 
Word Line # Line Sources for word
Caves

34

From the fountain and the caves

 Bruce 1
 Kircher 2
 Maurice 2
 Milton 4

 Rennell

 

36

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

 Bruce 1
 Kircher 2
 Maurice 2
 Milton 4

 Rennell

 

47

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

 Bruce 1
 Kircher 2
 Maurice 2
 Milton 4
 Rennell

Fountains

19

A mighty fountain momently was forced

 Bartram 4
 Bartram 5
 Bartram 6

 Bartram 7

 Bartram 8
 Beckford
 Bernier 2
 Bernier 4
 Bruce 1
 Bruce 2

 Bruce 3

 Burnet 1
 Herodotus
 Maurice 2
 Milton 4
 Pausanias
 Rennell
 Seneca 1
 Virgil
 Wollstonecraft

 

34

From the fountain and the caves

 Bartram 4
 Bartram 5
 Bartram 6

 Bartram 7

 Bartram 8
 Beckford
 Bernier 2
 Bernier 4
 Bruce 1
 Bruce 2

 Bruce 3

 Burnet 1
 Herodotus
 Maurice 2
 Milton 4
 Pausanias
 Rennell
 Seneca 1
 Virgil
 Wollstonecraft

Ice

36

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

 Maurice 2

 

47

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

 Maurice 2

Moon

15

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

Bruce 6
Maurice 1
Maurice 2

Purchas 5

Wollstonecraft

Sacred

3

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

 Beckford
 
Burnet 1
 Maurice 1
 Maurice 2

 

24

It flung up momently the sacred river

 Beckford
 
Burnet 1
 Maurice 1
 Maurice 2

 

26

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran

Beckford
 
 Burnet 1
 Maurice 1
 Maurice 2

 

 

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