And this process of intercourse between God and man is symbolised in
the Incarnation, which is not a single event in time, but the
culmination of an eternal process. It is the central fact of a man's
experience, "for it is going on perceptibly in himself"; and in like
manner "the Trinity becomes the only and self-evident explanation of
mysteries which are daily wrought in his own complex nature."[20] In
this way is it that to Patmore religion is not a question of blameless
life or the holding of certain beliefs, but it is "an experimental
science" to be lived and to be felt, and the clues to the experiments
are to be found in natural human processes and experiences interpreted
in the light of the great dogmas of the Christian faith.

For Keats, the avenue to truth and reality took the form of Beauty. The
idea, underlying most deeply and consistently the whole of his poetry,
is that of the unity of life; and closely allied with this is the belief
in progress, through ever-changing, ever-ascending stages. _Sleep and
Poetry, Endymion_, and _Hyperion_ represent very well three stages in
the poet's thought and art. In _Sleep and Poetry_ Keats depicts the
growth even in an individual life, and describes the three stages of
thought, or attitudes towards life, through which the poet must pass.
They are not quite parallel to the three stages of the mystical ladder
marked out by Wordsworth in the main body of his poetry, because they do
not go quite so far, but they are almost exactly analogous to the three
stages of mind he describes in _Tintern Abbey_. The first is mere animal
pleasure and delight in living--

A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;
A laughing school-boy without grief or care
Hiding the springy branches of an elm.