"What is true repentance but in thought-- Not e'en in inmost thought to think again The sins that made the past so pleasant to us?" _Idylls of the King._ He has been accused of making St. Simeon Stylites a self-righteous saint. That he makes him ambitious of saintdom is true, but this hope which he "will not cease to grasp," is fostered by no sense of his own merits, but, on the contrary, springs from the deepest possible conviction of his unworthiness. He describes himself as "The basest of mankind, From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin, Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet For troops of devils mad with blasphemy." He proclaims from his pillar, his "high nest of penance," "That Pontius and Iscariot by _his_ side Showed like fair seraphs." He details, indeed, in language strikingly intense, his sufferings, prayers, and penances; but he disclaims all praise on account of them, and ascribes all his patience to the divine bounty. He does not breathe or "whisper any murmur of complaint," while he tells how his teeth "Would chatter with the cold, and all his beard Was tagged with icy fringes in the moon;" how his "thighs were rotted with the dew;" and how "For many weeks about his loins he wore The rope that haled the buckets from the well. Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;" yet the climax of it all is, "Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin." The Catholic aspects in _St. Agnes' Eve_ and _Sir Galahad_, are no less marked than those of _St. Simeon Stylites_. {150} As a devout breathing of a dying nun, the first of these poems is touching and exquisite. The snows lie deep on the convent-roof, and the shadows of its towers "slant down the snowy sward," while she prays and says: "As these white robes are soiled and dark. To yonder shining ground; As this pale taper's earthly spark, To yonder argent round; So shows my soul before the Lamb, My spirit before Thee; So in mine earthly house I am, To that I hope to be." All heaven bursts its "starry floors," the gates roll back, the heavenly Bridegroom waits to welcome and purify the sister's departing soul. The vision dilates. It is mysteriously vague--mysteriously distinct: "The sabbaths of eternity. One sabbath deep and wide-- A light upon the shining sea-- The Bridegroom with his bride!" There is in such verse an indescribably Catholic tone. It is like the heavenly music of faith, which pervades the _Paradise_ of Dante, and which (in spite of the lax lives of the authors) runs through the "Sacred Songs" of Moore, and the _Epistle of Eloisa_, and _The Dying Christian's Address to his Soul_, by Pope. But if Tennyson has proved equal to portraying a Catholic saint, he has also depicted most graphically a Catholic knight of romance. Sir Galahad, one of the ornaments of King Arthur's court, (_Idylls of the King_., p. 213,) whose