own devotion to his pursuit of truth. The devoted ascetics who reside in this hermitage serve as an unchanging canvas by which the speaker can measure the relative success or failure of his own quest. The speaker of the poem begins his interior monologue with the question “—And what am I, that I am here?” (66). The speaker looks to the monks for a renewal of his faith, not in a religious sense, but in a validation of the legitimacy of his own pursuit: “Oh, hide me in your gloom profound / Ye solemn…
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