Patient on this tall pillar I have borne
Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;
And I had hoped that ere this period closed
Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,
Denying not these weather-beaten limbs
The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.
O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,
Not whisper any murmur of complaint.
Pain heaped ten hundred-fold to this, were still
Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear
Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd
My spirit flat before thee."


Admirably also has Mr. Tennyson conceived the hermit's secret doubt
of the truth of those miracles, which he is so often told that he
has worked, that he at last begins to believe that he must have
worked them; and the longing, at the same time, to justify himself
to himself, by persuading himself that he has earned miraculous
powers. On this whole question of hermit miracles I shall speak at
length hereafter. I have given specimens enough of them already,
and shall give as few as possible henceforth. There is a sameness
about them which may become wearisome to those who cannot be
expected to believe them. But what the hermits themselves thought
of them, is told (at least, so I suspect) only too truly by Mr.
Tennyson--


"O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am;
A sinful man, conceived and born in sin: