 The exact date of " Ode to a Nightingale " , as well as " Ode on Indolence " , " Ode on Melancholy " , and " Ode on a Grecian Urn " , is unknown , as Keats dated all as ' May 1819 ' . However , he worked on the four poems together , and there is a unity in both their stanza forms and their themes . The exact order the poems were written in is also unknown , but they form a sequence within their structures . While Keats was writing " Ode on a Grecian Urn " and the other poems , Brown transcribed copies of the poems and submitted them to Richard Woodhouse . During this time , Benjamin <unk> , Keats ' friend , was given a copy of " Ode to a Nightingale " , and he shared the poem with the editor of the Annals of the Fine Arts , James <unk> . <unk> paid Keats a small sum of money , and the poem was published in the July issue . The poem was later included in Keats ' 1820 collection of poems , <unk> , Isabella , The Eve of St Agnes , and Other written by <unk> Kumar 
