 " Ode to a Nightingale " is a poem by John Keats written either in the garden of the Spaniards Inn , Hampstead , London or , according to Keats ' friend Charles <unk> Brown , under a plum tree in the garden of Keats ' house at Wentworth Place , also in Hampstead . According to Brown , a nightingale had built its nest near the house Keats and Brown shared 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 . 
