"
Moving water, then, has the power of stimulating emotion and
prompting intuition; and this power is manifested in exceptional
degree when the source from which the water issues, and the
goal to which it flows, are unknown. These conditions are best
satisfied in the case of streams that flow in volume through
subterranean caverns. The darkness contributes its element of
undefined dread, and the hollow rumblings make the darkness
to be felt. What more calculated to fill the mind of the child of
nature with a sense of life and will behind the phenomena? The
weird reverberations are interpreted by him as significant
utterances of mighty, unseen powers, and the caves and chasms
are invested with the awe due to entrances into the gloomy
regions where reign the monarchs of the dead.
True, it may be said, for the child of nature. But are such
experiences possible for the modern mind? Yes, if we can
pierce through the varied disguises which the intuitional
material assumes as times and manners change. Coleridge, for
instance, is thrown into a deep sleep by an anodyne. His
imagination takes wings to itself; images rise up before him,
and, without conscious effort, find verbal equivalents. The
enduring substance of the vision is embodied in the fragment,
"Kubla Khan," the glamour of which depends chiefly on the
mystical appeal of subterranean waters. We are transported to
where
"Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.
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