Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! / No hungry generations tread thee down;
Keats wrote the ode in the spring of 1819, reportedly after hearing a nightingale in the garden at Wentworth Place in Hampstead. The poet sets the bird’s lasting song against the brief lives of human beings.
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness;
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, / Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players;
Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me –
Break, break, break, / On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! / And I would that my tongue could utter / The thoughts that arise in me.