# John Keats's most famous lines

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty', 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness', 'half in love with easeful Death': the lines of John Keats's 1819 odes and ballads that everyone quotes, checked against the 1884 Poetical Works.

- 134 votes · 12 items
- Jul 21, 2022 · hiker.lost
- https://even.best/en/l/4666/john-keats-s-most-famous-lines

## Top 12

1. **Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter** (16 · ▲16 ▼0) — 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' (1819).
2. **'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.** (15 · ▲15 ▼0) — 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' (1819), closing lines.
3. **Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness!** (12 · ▲14 ▼2) — 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' (1819), first line.
4. **Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget** (10 · ▲12 ▼2) — 'Ode to a Nightingale' (1819).
5. **Darkling I listen; and for many a time / I have been half in love with easeful Death** (10 · ▲11 ▼1) — 'Ode to a Nightingale' (1819).
6. **O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, / Alone and palely loitering?** (8 · ▲9 ▼1) — 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' (1819).
7. **Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun** (7 · ▲7 ▼0) — 'To Autumn' (1819), first lines.
8. **Already with thee! tender is the night** (4 · ▲8 ▼4) — 'Ode to a Nightingale' (1819); F. Scott Fitzgerald took his novel's title from it.
9. **Was it a vision, or a waking dream? / Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?** (3 · ▲5 ▼2) — 'Ode to a Nightingale' (1819), closing lines.
10. **Forlorn! the very word is like a bell** (2 · ▲6 ▼4) — 'Ode to a Nightingale' (1819).
11. **'La Belle Dame sans Merci / Hath thee in thrall!'** (2 · ▲4 ▼2) — 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' (1819).
12. **Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!** (-1 · ▲4 ▼5) — 'Ode to a Nightingale' (1819).

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