The Role Of Nature: William Wordsworth VS John Keats

In “Tintern Abbey,” William Wordsworth says true comfort can be found in nature, yet John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” disputes that idea. While for Woodsworth nature brings tranquility and a sense of ease, for Keats, it is a reminder of how awful he sees the world and his longing for death.

William Woodsworth begins his poem by telling the reader that it has been five years since he last visited this place of seclusion and serenity. The large mountains “impress/ Thoughts of more deep seclusion”.

The landscape was so memorable that his visions of the land closely mirrors reality. While off in “the din/ Of towns and cities,” Wordsworth’s memories filled him “with tranquil restoration” . He gives The Banks of Wye credit for lifting the burden of the “unintelligible world,” and filling it with light . Through the tranquility of the land, “an eye made quiet by the power/ Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,/ We see into the life of things.

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” Away from all of the distractions of the world, and through joy brought by peace, we are able to see life in its pureness.

In his time away, Wordsworth has returned to the memories made here, as a place of safe haven. Though he never truly relives these initial images, he returns to grow, once again, from what this place has to offer. He does not envy the inability to relive these encounters but knows “that in this moment there is life and food/ For future years” (Woodsworth 64-65).

Nature to him was more than just a sensory experience;

“the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to me

An appetite; and a feeling of love” .

He does not mourn what once was because it has taught him a new way to look at life. To him, nature and his senses were “The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,/ The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/ Of all my being” .More simply put, this place was his comfort. For his “memory be as a dwelling-place/For all sweet sounds and harmonies”.

John Keats had a drastically diverse experience with nature. Rather than being a “dwelling place,” nature caused his heart to ache . When speaking of the nightingale that “Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,/But being too happy in thine happiness” . He wants the reader to understand that the pain he is feeling is not due to envy of the bird. He proceeds to tell the reader that he wants to indulge in wine and compares it to nature when saying, 'That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,/And with thee fade away into the forest dim” . He wants to forget about “What thou among the leaves hast never known,” meaning human society where people are sick, tired and sad. Away from nature the young “grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”. Thinking, for Keats, causes wretchedness, and this wretchedness exhausts a man. In society, beauty and love are fleeting.

Keats exclaims, “Away! Away! For I fly to thee,” as he longs to fly amongst the nightingale. Keats realizes once he is in the nightingale’s world, that it is dark. He has but his sight as he encounters this new world. He calls to the darkness, “for many a time/I have been half in love with easeful Death” . Previously, Keats had asked Death to take him, but “Now more than ever seems it rich to die,” for he is entranced by the darkness, reminding of this hunger for a painless death. As his thoughts wandered to think of the “immortal bird,” he is brought back to reality; sad to see the nightingale disappear. But “Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/ Fled is that music:-Do I wake or do I sleep?” .

Keats did not find comfort from the forest, but of the idea of death. Death for Keats would be an escape from the pain and suffering of the world. The nightingale, who flew freely and sung steadily with pleasure was the image Keats imagined when he thought of death. He felt that through death, he would find joy, he would not know the pains of human society, and most importantly, he thought death would give him the sense of peace and comfort that he longed for.

When Keats was in nature, he was drowned by his thoughts of human society. Nature did not bring “pleasing thoughts/ That in this moment there is life and food/ For future years” as it did for Wordsworth, but left him longing for there to be no future years. For Keats, nature led him to be reminded of the sick, sad and weary. He didn’t want to be revived again, but to disappear into the darkness of the forest of the nightingale . It seemed simpler to Keats to disappear quietly than to suffer amid society. Keats also struggled with differentiating reality from his visions of nature. When he was brought back from the world of the nightingale, he asked, “Do I wake or do I sleep?” (Keats 80)

Not only did Keats and Wordsworth feel different emotions from nature, but they saw it differently as well. Where Wordsworth spoke of how nature lifts his burdens and fills them with light Keats told how he was surrounded with darkness, with only his senses of smell and hearing to guide him. Woodsworth even speaks of how nature breathes into us and we “become a living soul.” . Woodsworth still allows himself to hear the “sad music of humanity” but ultimately is “still/ A lover of the meadows and the woods” .

Ultimately, it is a human’s perception of nature, and life, that determines if he finds comfort in nature. You can choose to use nature as a place of emotional healing, or you can use it as a place to dwell in the thoughts of the world. You can choose to see the light of the sun and stars, or you can hide amongst the shadows. William Woodsworth used nature as a place of healing, security, and a place to find joy and comfort. John Keats was too engulfed in the world, that the thought of it lingered with him into nature. The only comfort for him was a complete escape from not only society but from life itself. It isn’t nature where humans find true comfort, it is in themselves.