The Empty Grave of Edgar Allan Poe

XANADU

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea."

          And where is Xanadu? A question that has confounded mankind for the two centuries since Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the lines. Two hundred years of poring over the poet`s letters, his journals, his random thoughts and opium dreams. Countless books have been written on the subject for it is one of the world`s great mysteries; the literary world at least. Scholars have endlessly debated the possibilities, meditating on the workings of the poet`s mind. Calculations have been made as to the relevant quantities of laudanum, learning, dreams and memory needed to produce such a vision. Coleridge himself, of course, was no help. He claimed the poem came to him in a dream and when he awoke he proceeded to write it all down. Unfortunately he was interrupted by a gentleman from Porlock who had called on business. When the poet returned to his desk, he found the rest of the vision flown and so the poem remained unfinished. It hangs there like a hawk hovering in the air. 
          Xanadu is a place of dreams. But it does exist; after a fashion. I have been there. I have seen it. I have wandered the caverns measureless to man and walked beside the sacred river, Alph. Which is not its real name.
          The trip to Xanadu is not as arduous as that undertaken by Livingston Lowes, who took every image in the poem and painstakingly matched it to the description of places in every single book that was in print in Coleridge`s day. Books which the poet might have read, possibly had stacked in the shelves of his library, perused in his leisure hours, idly searching for details of sights and sounds, turns of phrase to spin the web of dreams. There is an easier road to take to Xanadu, one which crosses from England into the heart of Wales.
          There, I have done it; broken the spell. I could have spent more time playing with your expectations, hinting at possibilities. Perhaps he has invented some wondrous machine which transports him through time and space or parallel dimensions. Perhaps he has found some long-lost fragment from a torn-out page in a missing volume of the poet`s diary. Perhaps he has forged a link to the same ghost that visited Coleridge and dictated the famous lines. Perhaps he uses crystals or some form of meditation. Perhaps he takes drugs. All gone now. All dreams shattered. Xanadu is in Wales and you can`t get a more prosaic statement than that.
          When I first considered writing a story about my trip to Xanadu, I thought in terms of a comic `squib`, a "Three Men In A Boat" reworked as "Three Men On A Mountain", with myself playing the buffoon. However, recollecting that day in solitude, like Coleridge`s great mate Wordsworth thinking about the daffodils, I found myself searching for some greater significance in the experiences I had undergone. It is true I had come close to death, had faced the Reaper and stared him down. I still felt like a fool, but as I near my fiftieth year I  begin to realise that death is no laughing matter. And so I apologise for taking this other path. It is not so entertaining and I wonder whether it should even be called a story. It rambles. It moves from one topic to another, seemingly at random. There is no plot. It does not drive along to some great climax. There is no wicked twist in the tale. It will end like a hawk hovering in the air. Just hanging there and you will be none the wiser. I cannot even promise you a scenic tour. I am colour blind and I take it on trust that the countryside is green. It looks very nice but that`s about as much description as you`ll get from me. Neither are the characters meticulously described. I know who they are and what they look like. You will never meet them and they will never read this, so I have not even bothered to change their names. It is a true account.  So what is that? An essay I suppose. A literary essay on the origin of Coleridge`s Xanadu. It is in Wales.
          It was sometime in 1998, around September I think. I`m not being deliberately vague here, it`s just my age, the memory`s starting to go. You could ask me what I did last week and I`d give you a vacant stare; although I probably didn`t hear the question, I`m deaf in one ear as well. So it was September and the leaves were beginning to change colour to whatever colour it is that they change to, and I suggested to my friend Clive that we take a trip to Wales to visit our mutual friend, Grainger. Now there`s a name I could have changed to make things more mundane, root them in reality, but I didn`t. Six months earlier Clive had undergone a quadruple heart bypass. He suffered from the same arterial problems which had killed his father, but medical science moves on and the operation was a complete success. Clive was now fully recovered, much fitter than me in fact. He is not married, has no family and when he came out of hospital I had lived with him for a fortnight while he recuperated. Thereby hangs another tale but let us just say the trip to Wales was an attempt to cover up the cracks which had appeared during that fortnight in a friendship which had begun thirty years before.
          So, come September - which is the title of a film notable only for the fact that Bobby Darin gets to sing "Multiplication" and which has no bearing on this tale apart from the singer`s early death at the age of thirty-seven, ten years younger than Clive when he had his heart bypassed, the same age as Grainger is now - we set off from Stoke-on-Trent and crossed the border into Wales. I could list the roads we took, mention the towns we passed through, describe the car in which we travelled, but to use my eldest son`s favourite phrase, "I can`t be arsed".
          Grainger lives in the village of Pontrhydygroes, which means, I think, `bridge over a ford`. It lies close to the village of Devil`s Bridge, which is famous for its waterfall. The workings of the Welsh Village Naming Agency are beyond me. The scenery is very nice. And there are few people. A lot of sheep hanging on the hillsides and we saw a fair number of hawks hovering in the air. We also saw a dead badger in the middle of the road. It was the first badger I`d ever seen in real life, but it was dead so I suppose that doesn`t count. Pontrhydygroes lies about ten miles inland from the city of Aberystwyth which is at the dead centre of Wales` western coastline. So we had passed from the heart of England through the heart of Wales, almost to the very edge of the land. A journey of around one hundred miles. This is how you get to Xanadu from Stoke.
          Coleridge himself took a different route. In 1794 he and three friends embarked on a walking tour of North Wales. This was four years before he wrote "Kubla Khan", four years before he misremembered where he`d seen Xanadu. On July 29th the party arrived in Aberystwyth and then walked on to Devil`s Bridge. In a letter, Coleridge wrote of "immense and rugged clefts in the mountains, which in winter must form cataracts most tremendous; now there is just enough sun-glittering water dashed down over them to soothe, not disturb the ear." Now there`s a writer for you. We arrived at Grainger`s cottage down by the river and everywhere looked very nice.
          Grainger had moved his family to Wales a few years ago when a doctor in Stoke told his wife, Veronica,  to get out of town. This makes her sound like some recalcitrant cowboy. I should not have used the phrase. What the doctor in fact said was that if she stayed in Stoke then she would die. She needed a change of air. To continue living she must stop breathing the foul air of the city and breathe instead the fresh air of the countryside. Now I remember Stoke-on-Trent before the bottle kilns switched to electric and gas, when all the potbanks used coal to fire the ovens to make all the china cups and plates and teapots and toilets and pretty figures of ladies in big frocks to send all round the world. Back then the sky was full of smoke. So back then I would agree the air of the City was not a  good thing to breathe. Nowadays the air in Stoke is quite clean, at least you can`t see it, but Veronica was born with a twisted spine and as she grows older her back continues to bend and press down upon her lungs. So when the doctor gave her a machine to monitor her breathing through the night, an oxygen mask affair which would kick in if her lungs stopped doing the job, then Grainger decided they`d better move. So they came to Pontrhydygroes and Veronica is a lot better now. She still uses the machine, just in case. Just in case she stops breathing in the night. In the dark. Just stops. Like that. And is no more. But, like I say, she seems healthy enough. Considering.
          And their three kids are doing fine and Grainger, well what can I say? He seems to miss the lights of the Big City, but considering we`re talking about Stoke, that could seem a slightly pathetic pose to strike. In fact I think he enjoys the rural life. He has turned into quite a countryman. He knows the names of all the trees and shrubs in his garden, even the ones he did not plant himself, for the cottage is rented. He will also rhapsodise at length about the wonders of nature which surround him. I mentioned the dead badger and he said they had a family of the same living nearby. He`d also seen foxes. I countered that I had seen just such a creature walking down our street. It was late one night, I was just letting the cat in and I saw this fox walking along the pavement. He stopped and we stared at one another for a moment and then he just loped off, cool as you please. We discussed such matters as we sat in Grainger`s living room and drank tea. We did not discuss the fact that the Government has just decided to kill some badgers because there is a chance that they might be causing TB in cattle. They do not know this for a fact but they are going to kill a few badgers anyway, just to see if the cows stop coughing. We did not discuss this because it had not happened yet. I just put it in now because we were on the subject of badgers and I could.
          Clive and I had lunched on the way down. We stopped in a layby and had a slap-up feast of sandwiches and chocolate biscuits and pop. After our cup of tea, Grainger suggested we go for a walk.  Now I had come to visit my friends and so I was wearing my best black trousers and my second-best black jacket (for the best is reserved for funerals and other formal social occasions), a shirt and tie and a pair of what you would probably describe as `town shoes`. Black, leather uppers, plastic soles, as made in the sweatshops of Hungary or Indonesia. The soles were smooth and had no tread. They were not designed for what was to come. But then when Grainger said, "Let`s go for a walk", I did not know what was to come. The weather was not inclement for the season. It had rained earlier in the day so everywhere was wet, but the sun now shone and there were no clouds in the sky. I got my coat from the car just in case and Clive loaded himself up with his big bag of cameras. I asked Clive whether he felt up to a walk, but after the operation he`d been advised to walk as much as possible and by now he was doing five miles a day, so I needn`t have worried. And to tell the truth, I didn`t. It was just politeness on my part. And so we set off. To Xanadu.
          The village of Pontrhydygroes lies in a valley, a valley carved over millennia by  the River Ystwyth. All I remember from geography lessons is how oxbow lakes are formed, but when I see a valley with sheer rock cliffs rising either side, I blame the river for doing the work. You drive down the narrow road, which then turns sharply to the left, crosses the river and climbs up the other side of the valley on the way to Tregaron. This is the road which Coleridge took in 1794. One of his companions, John Hucks, wrote an account of their trip and mentions their journey from Devil`s Bridge to Tregaron, and this is the road you take. But he does not mention Pontrhydygroes and he does not mention Hafod. And Hafod is Xanadu.
          "Hafod" is Welsh for "a summer dwelling", which, these days, conjures up a picture of a modest cottage by the sea. But there was nothing modest about this summer dwelling or the man who dwelt there. This particular Hafod was home to a Colonel Johnes. And so, if Hafod is Xanadu then it follows that Colonel Johnes is Kubla Kahn.
          Colonel Johnes owned the valley and built himself a fabulous estate. Pontrhydgroes was a mining village. Lead and silver were extracted from the rocks and although the workings have lain idle for years it is still not wise to drink the water which springs from the cliffs and finds it way down to the river. But Hafod was no kin to this subterranean world. I could make reference to Morlocks and Eloi, but the socialist vision of H.G. Wells belongs to a different story, another time and place. Coincidentally the place is Stoke-on-Trent but I must keep to the path. The path across the road, the cinder path, overgrown with grass and weeds, which leads to the gates of Hafod. So we crossed the road which Coleridge took in 1794, and entered the estate of Colonel Johnes and Grainger told us the tale. How Colonel Johnes had tamed this wild landscape. How he had planted three million trees, built himself a grand house, a model farm, a church and a library, all enclosed within eight miles of wall. And the library, octagonal in shape, was surmounted by a copper dome. All this he did and more. There were fountains and statues and ornamental gardens. And he also cut another entrance to the estate through solid rock, so that visitors could take another path and catch their first glimpse of this enchanted realm through this narrow cleft. We left the estate this way and I gazed back through the rocks, now dripping with moss and ferns, and saw nothing. For nothing now remains of Hafod. Nothing now remains of Xanadu.
          In 1803 the model farm was destroyed by fire. In 1807, on Friday the thirteenth of March, the house was destroyed by fire. The library was also destroyed. The pleasure dome which held the ancient Welsh manuscripts, the collection of medieval romances, and all the other literary treasures, was destroyed. And it was said that Literature had suffered no greater loss since the destruction of the Library at Alexandria. In 1932 the church was destroyed by fire. And since then whatever remained has been taken away or stolen or flattened, by those entitled and those not, so that all that you can now see in Hafod are the foundations, overgrown with weeds and grass. Nothing else remains. Not even the marble group, sculpted by Francis Legatt Chantrey, which showed Colonel Johnes and his wife leaning over the death bed of their daughter, their only child. This was destroyed in the fire that took the church. The church which held the vault where the young girl was buried. The vault which she came to share with her father, much much later, after he had given up the dream that was Hafod and had moved far away. After his death, his body was returned to Hafod and Colonel Johnes was laid to rest with his beloved daughter.
          But what of Coleridge, walking past the gates of Hafod on his way to Tregaron? If we leave the story here, then I could be accused of choosing the wrong poet. The tragic history of Colonel Johnes seems more the source of Shelley`s "Ozymandias". But not in 1794. Not when Hafod stood in its full glory, pleasure dome intact. And are we to assume that Coleridge passed by the gates and did not call in to see this wonder of the age? It was famous. Colonel Johnes was a well-respected figure, a friend to the great and the good, a patron of the arts. And Coleridge just walked on by? His great mate Wordsworth visited the place twice, and Coleridge accompanied him to Wales in 1798, so he could have seen Hafod then. But four years earlier he walked by the very gates. And did not go in? I cannot believe that. And so, when Grainger suggested we take a different route back, I forgot about my shoes and my best trousers, and agreed. I was infected by the atmosphere of the place. I tried to recall the poem and looked for clues all around me. Grainger told us about the Robbers` Cave somewhere in the cliffs above. The cave itself was hidden behind a waterfall and Colonel Johnes had cut another entrance through the rock so that his guests could stand behind the waterfall and marvel. And in the winter? "A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!" Another amusement Colonel Johnes provided was wild hermits. People he employed to wander the woodland and jump out at unsuspecting visitors. Like a ghost train in a fairground. "And all who heard  should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair!"
          We had left Hafod through the gateway of rock and walked down to the little wooden bridge that crossed the Ystwyth. We walked alongside the riverbank, on a well-trodden path through the forest. Grainger drew our attention to one great twisted beast of an oak which was already old when Colonel Johnes had planted the others which surrounded it. He named the different makes of trees, the yews and ashes and horse-chestnuts (conker trees to us ageing urbanites). There also seemed to be a lot of birches. Every other tree would be declared a birch and I sometimes failed to see the similarities. I began to think that `birch` was the generic term used to describe any tree of unknown variety. Grainger also pointed to ferns and flowers and fungi, and as we walked and the path got narrower and less-defined, I noticed how dark it was getting, how the sky was hidden behind the branches of the trees, which seemed to overhang the river. So I walked the "caverns measureless to man", although not all the way to "the sunless sea". After the path disappeared a couple of times and we had to jump across the streams which cascaded down and fed the river, the forest came to an abrupt end and we faced a fence, with a stile, and a grass-covered hill beyond. The stile was an indication that we were on a public footpath but there was no evidence on the other side where that footpath lay. I jokingly said to Grainger, "What do we do now, climb the hill?" And he said, "Yes."
          Now this was not Everest. This was just a grass-covered hill. Unfortunately the grass had overgrown the path so there was no indication where we should walk. And it was steep. And it loomed above me. No Everest, no need for ropes or ice picks or crampons on your boots. But some rubber tread on my shoes would have been nice. Still, I had little choice in the matter. To go back would mean a longer journey and the leaping of the streams. We could not keep to the riverbank because there wasn`t one, the hill ran down and the Ystwyth had done what it was destined to do for time immemorial,  had cut into the earth so there was a sheer drop of ten feet or more to the rushing water. I hesitated, but Clive did not. Clive, with his big bag of cameras and his bypassed heart, did not baulk at the sight of the great hill, but followed Grainger over the stile and started to climb.
          Now the furthest thing from my mind was Kubla Khan and Samuel bloody Taylor Coleridge. Now I had other things on my plate. The grass was wet. The grass was slippery. I had no idea where the footpath lay and I suspected neither did Grainger. He stopped to point out a shrub and  I cursed him under my breath. Clive stopped to take a photograph. I did not dare stop for when I did I felt my shoes slide from under me. I moved in front of Clive and caught up with Grainger. I asked him about the path. He said there was one here. Somewhere. He`d walked this way in the winter when the grass was shorter. He told me to be careful of the hidden streams which ran down the hill to the river beneath. I stepped in one. My right foot sank into a great wet hole which soaked one leg of my best trousers up to the knee. I scrambled to my feet and grabbed at a bush. Grainger told me its name. We continued to climb.
          At this point, if this were fiction, as we reached the climax of the hill I could throw in some great revelation or I could have something happen. Clive could fall to his death, or preferably Grainger. But this is true, this is what happened and so there is no climax. Before we reached the summit, Grainger announced that he had found the path. Clive was behind me, taking a photograph. I was on my hands and knees between them, hanging onto the grass, hoping it would hold. I looked down and saw the river far below. I don`t know how far. Three or four hundred feet. Two miles. I`m no great judge of distance. But I clung onto the grass and knew that if I let go there would be nothing to stop me falling. I would just slide down that hill and crash into the rocks in the river beneath. The only thing between me and death was a blade of grass. For a moment I was frozen by the fear of moving. I knew if I let go and got to my feet then my shoes would send me slipping into the abyss. On the other hand I could not stay here forever.
          Now I have never been one to court Death. I have never sought the adrenaline rush. I have never wanted to don the uniform of the Queen and go off to fight for Her and Country, or Her and Penguins, or Her and Oil, or Her and whatever it is we are supposed to fight for these days. I have no wish to play with guns and tanks. I have put away childish things. Neither do I see the point in tying my feet to an elastic rope and throwing myself off a bridge. So, hanging there on the side of the hill, it might as well have been Everest, I was so unaccustomed to that kind of situation. I live an uneventful life and am content to do so. I add this information for those who might claim I am making mountains out of molehills.
          And so I clawed my way along the side of the hill, handful of grass by handful of grass until I reached a forsythia bush. I thanked Grainger and used it to hoist myself upright. He pointed to some indentations in the grass. It was the path. I slid along behind him until we reached another stile. Over that was the road and once again I felt tarmac under my feet. For a brief moment I was a happy man.
          We walked down the road to Grainger`s cottage, backtracking in Coleridge`s footsteps, and we sat before the fire and  I  let the steam rise from my best trousers and I put up with the laughter of Veronica and the children and Grainger and Clive. It was a good joke and I was the butt of it, but I didn`t care. I laughed along with them. Because I still could.
          So there I could leave it. A cosy scene with which to end. Warmth and laughter. I have told you all I know about the source for Coleridge`s vision of Xanadu. The literary scholars may leave us now. Similarly, for those who read to gain practical information I will state the moral of my tale: Choose your shoes with care. So why not leave it at that? There`s little more to tell. Nothing much will happen. Veronica will not die. Clive will not suffer a relapse. I will not murder Grainger when he points out a holly bush in his garden. Holly I know. And yet the thing lacks form, it stutters to its close. And my brush with death, the reason why this tale has hung around my mind for months waiting to be written, I read my account of it now and it seems such a poor thing. It lacks impact, it needs to be embellished with descriptive phrases and psychological insights to bring out the fear I felt at the time. But I cannot do it.
          Sitting in the warmth of Grainger`s hearth, laughing about my inappropriate footwear, dissipated any chance of life-affirming resolutions. I continue to smoke, to eat the wrong kinds of food, to take as little exercise as possible. I had cheated death, but not in the spectacular fashion of Clive, surrounded by tubes and electronic instruments and the surgeon`s knives. I had merely stepped a little closer to that abyss which is a constant feature of the landscape of our lives. My nod at the black-cloaked bloke with the big curvy knife is more akin to a stumble on the top step which almost sends you down the stairs, or a little skid on an icy patch in the road. Most of us walk along the path until our bodies get tired and we fall over. Maybe I had peeped a little longer into the abyss, but not enough to make me acknowledge Jesus as my Saviour. Or give up smoking.
          Why not let it stand in its haphazard form, half literary essay, half personal anecdote? Because it is haphazard, because it lacks shape and form, it is not neat. It is like life itself. It is not art. I considered bringing in another poet here. I would quote Keats` views on a Greek pot and then make connections with my own life here in Stoke-on-Trent, the centre of the pottery industry. Grecian urns and toilet bowls, I could meld and mix the twain until the truth be found. I could knead the clay and bring in Milton`s God and wax poetic for a while. But there are too many poets here already. So let us return to life and continue a while longer in hope of making a better end.
          After a tea of sausage, egg and chips, Grainger suggested another trip, this time in the car. I have a thing about medieval monasteries, or the ruins thereof, for they were all destroyed in the Dissolution by the great vandal, King Henry VIII. There was one about five miles away, called Strata Florida. It was established by the Cistercians in the twelfth century and  took its name from the valley in which it stood, the Vale of Fflur. Strata Florida means `blanket of flowers`. It had taken the monks fifty years to build the abbey and for a while it was renowned as a centre for Welsh scholarship. It had once been the largest abbey in Wales, but Grainger warned me that little now remained. It was no Rievaulx or Fountains or Whitby - if you`re looking for a good-sized ruin then Yorkshire`s got the best. Still, after my brush with death, I felt a quick visit to church might be in order.  So we got in the car and took Coleridge`s road to Tregaron and after a few miles turned off and arrived at Strata Florida. It was closed.
          There was a time, not so long ago, when the smaller sites of historical interest were all free and open to the public, at all hours of the day or night, to wander around at will. Now they`ve all been fenced round and turnstiles have been installed and money has to change hands and the sites keep shop hours. Luckily for us, the Protestants had built a church next door to the abbey and so we wandered through their graveyard and peeped over the fence at the place where the monks once walked. It was very nice, but no Rievaulx. You got no sense of grandeur or past glory. You couldn`t project your mind and imagine how it must have been when God was still in charge of things. It was a pretty ruin and little more.
          We paid our respects at the grave of Dafydd ap Gwilym, the finest of the Welsh medieval poets, and then we left the blanket of flowers and returned to the car. Grainger suggested we take another route back. Already feeling guilty about the perilous return from Hafod, he was now having to cope with the disappointment of Strata Florida being closed. He was desperate to make amends and find some impressive vista to stick in our minds. He wanted to show off his new home. Whether to convince us or himself that Wales had more to offer than Stoke, I don`t know. So he gave me directions and I drove up twisty country lanes until we came upon one of the most desolate sights I`ve ever seen. It was another valley. Wales is full of valleys as Stoke used to be full of bottle kilns and now just seems to be full of pubs and furniture shops. But this valley wasn`t nice. When you turn off the main road to Aberystwyth and head for Pontrhydygroes you cross a pretty valley, a wide valley with grassy hills on one side and wooded hills on the other and a gentle stream running along its base. Then you climb through the trees and go down again into the rugged valley of the mighty Ystwyth, where Colonel Johnes built Hafod, where Grainger now lives, surrounded by impressive cliffs and forests and abandoned silver mines. And the next valley along is this strange empty place. An endless vista of open moorland with the occasional outcropping of rock and no sign of water at its base. An abandonment.
          There were a few sheep dotted about, as there always are in Wales, and Grainger (ever the informative guide) explained that this was the route the farmers chose to drive their sheep to the markets of England in the olden days. I tried to imagine it. I thought of Gil Favor shouting, "Head `em up, move `em out" in a Welsh accent to a bunch of sheep. It wasn`t "Rawhide" and Eric Fleming had died, aged 40, drowned in a river while making a film. I wondered why Grainger had brought us to this place and then he pointed to a buzzard making a long sweep over the land. And there was a red kite, riding on the currents of air. And there was a peregrine falcon, which skimmed over our heads and then soared aloft. Grainger named them all for us. One he recognised by its forked tail, but I can`t remember which. I think it was the red kite. Now I could trade on the paucity of language and make some clever allusion here to the skies of China and bring everything back to the magical realm of Kubla Khan. But my mind had taken another track by now and Xanadu had been left far behind. We stood and watched the hawks in their element, dancing over the blasted heath.
          Now we have hawks at home, back in Stoke. But they are the more common variety, kestrels, which hang above the embankments of motorways. You catch a glimpse of them hovering over some unseen rodent in the grass, but you never see them dive. You`re in a car, you`re moving too fast. I spotted one now, holding its place among its posher cousins. “That`s a kestrel, isn`t it?” I said to Grainger, hoping to impress with my own bird-spotting skills. “Yes,” he said, “also known as a windhover.” I regarded it as some fellow traveller from the great dirty city, come to this wild country for a holiday. I felt a kinship. And so I stood and watched the kestrel, watched it hanging in the sky, almost motionless, just hovering, waiting for the opportune moment to strike, to fall on its prey with sharp talons gleaming. And I stood and watched and waited, until Grainger said it was time to go home.
          So we drove back to Grainger`s cottage and  we had a final cup of tea. Then said our goodbyes and set off for Stoke. And as we climbed out of Grainger`s valley and through the pretty valley beyond, Clive talked about his plans for the future now that he had cheated the death that had taken his father. And I pressed the accelerator with a still-damp foot and I went over the doings of the day in my mind and I thought of Colonel Johnes and Hafod and I thought of Coleridge and Xanadu and I  thought of the hawk hovering in the air and I  wondered when the gentleman from Porlock would call on me, to end the dream.