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It seems to me that Tolkien was already thinking along "Myths Transformed" lines as early as 1942, where Treebeard refers several times to the Great Darkness (T also used this term for Sauron's volcanic overcast, which echoes his MT concept of Morgoth's worldwide smog).
Still, Moria was written *very* early, not all that long after the Bombadil chapters (which are explicitly "flat-earth")- so I'd go with 'poetic device'. Longing for a lost Golden Age is a Tolkien hallmark. After all, the mountains wer still "tall" in Gimli's day!
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