"
Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by
John Keats written in May 1819 in either the garden of the
Spaniards Inn,
Hampstead,
London, or, according to Keats' friend
Charles Armitage Brown, under a
plum tree in the garden of
Keats House, also in Hampstead. According to Brown, a
nightingale had built its nest near his home in the spring of 1819. Inspired by the bird's song, Keats composed the poem in one day. It soon became one of his
1819 odes and was first published in
Annals of the Fine Arts the following July. "Ode to a Nightingale" is a personal poem that describes Keats's journey into the state of
negative capability. The tone of the poem rejects the optimistic pursuit of pleasure found within Keats's earlier poems and explores the themes of nature, and mortality, the latter being particularly personal to Keats.