Keats on Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"

In John Keats' letter to John Hamilton Reynolds on May 3, 1818, Keats has brings up an idea that made me think of Tintern Abbey in a different way. (970 - 972).

In Keats's letter, he makes a metaphor which compares the Chambers of a mansion to the different steps of life. He describes the first part of our life, or our childhood, as one without any of our opinions or thoughts until we reach another part of our childhood, "The Chamber of Maiden Thought". This chamber starts out as being filled with light and wonder but as we get older and time passes, the doors within the chamber are all opened and we are surrounded by dark passages and mystery. Keats felts that Tintern Abbey was Wordworth's exploration of these dark passages.

Upon reading this, I decided to take another look at Tintern Abbey. The poem describes Wordsworth's return to a landscape he knew as a child. While describing it, he thinks of instances in his life when he was feeling alone or low and how the thought of the nature scene lifted him up. To Keats, Wordsworth was using the idealist views of the natural world that he felt as a child, though naive, to get him through the loss of wonder that comes with adulthood.

"But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din / Of towns and cities, I have owed to them / In hours of weariness, sensations sweet" (25 - 27).

"how oft - / In darkness and amid the many shapes / Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir / Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, / Have hung upon the beating of my heart / How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, / O sylvan Wye!" (50 - 55).

When first visiting Tintern Abbey as a child, he idealized the scene unknowingly. Then as he grew up and started to come to face the evils of the world or the dark passages that Keats mentions, he thinks fondly of the idealism of his childhood, or the way of thinking that comes with the first Chamber in Keats's metaphor.