Beneath the watry floor

Thinking about those watery borders between Vietnam and Cambodia triggers recollections of John Milton’s great poem “Lycidas.” Lycidias is an elegy on the death of Milton’s friend Edward King, who had drowned in a shipwreck in 1637.
As an aside, Saul Bellow makes brilliant use of water imagery from “Lycidas” throughout his short novel Seize the Day. See also Paul Elmen’s meditation on Robert Lowell: “Robert Lowell: Death of an Elfking.”
I wonder if this passage from “Lycidas” might shed some light on the Kurtz chronicles:

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of Noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious dayes;
But the fair Guerdon [reward] when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th’abhorr

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