 Of Keats 's six major odes of 1819 , " Ode to Psyche " , was probably written first and " To Autumn " written last . <unk> between these two , he wrote " Ode to a Nightingale " . It is possible that " Ode to a Nightingale " was written between 26 April and 18 May 1819 , based on weather conditions and similarities between images in the poem and those in a letter sent to Fanny Keats on May Day . The poem was composed at the Hampstead house Keats shared with Brown , possibly while sitting beneath a plum tree in the garden . According to Keats ' friend Brown , Keats finished the ode in just one morning : " In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house . Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song ; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast @-@ table to the grass @-@ plot under a plum @-@ tree , where he sat for two or three hours . When he came into the house , I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand , and these he was quietly <unk> behind the books . On inquiry , I found those scraps , four or five in number , contained his poetic feelings on the song of the nightingale . " Brown 's account is personal , as he claimed the poem was directly influenced by his house and preserved by his own doing . However , Keats relied on both his own imagination and other literature as sources for his depiction of the nightingale . 
