Who wrote the line 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness'?

• A. John Keats
• B. Lord Byron
• C. Percy Bysshe Shelley
• D. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Answer: (A)

John Keats wrote this line. It reflects his Romantic celebration of beauty as something that endures and deepens with time. The statement is famously the opening of Endymion, where beauty is portrayed as a constant source of joy that lasts forever and even grows more luminous as we behold it. The contrast between “a joy forever” and “its loveliness increases” emphasizes that beauty isn’t fleeting; our appreciation of it persists and intensifies, resisting decay with a kind of lasting vitality. This characteristically Keatsian idea—beauty as a lasting, expanding joy tied to the imagination and nature—is what sets the line apart from the works of the other poets listed, who, while also Romantic, express different concerns and stylistic tendencies.