What exactly does this quote mean: Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter: therefore ye...?

Question

soft pipes, play on.

Answer 1

It's an expression of the whole thesis of the poem -- "Thou still-unravished bride of quietness," etc. Throughout the "Ode," Keats asserts that it's the imagination, not our expression of it, that is the most powerful. (And of course, the irony is that this is one of the greatest expressions of imagination ever put to words.)

The idea is that a "heard melody" -- that is, music you hear -- may be sweet, but an "unheard melody" -- music you only imagine -- can be as sweet as your imagination wills it to be. Keats took the notion from the paintings on a piece of Greek pottery, the figure of a man playing a syrinx (pipes of Pan) to a woman; because it's just an image of someone playing music, you can't hear what he was playing, but you can IMAGINE it to be as beautiful as you wish.

The middle and later portion of the "Ode" deals with another classical theme, that life is short and art endures -- the figures on the urn are "forever panting and forever young," while passion among the living leaves one with a heart "high-sorrowful and cloyed." (To cloy, if it's an unfamiliar word, means to consume too much of something sweet, and by extension to have too much of any pleasure.)

One other phrase that gives modern readers fits:

"O Attic shape! Fair attitude! With brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought..."

In this case, "Attic" is an ancient name for Greece; "attitude" doesn't refer to copping a 'tude, but to the angle and posture of the urn itself; "brede" is an old word for an embroidered pattern such as one might see on a tapestry; and "overwrought" in this case doesn't mean emotionally overwrought, but rather that the urn itself has been overlaid with a pattern, like a tapestry, of marble men and maidens.

For my money, the key line in the poem, though, is:

"...in midst of other woe/Than ours..."

That captures the ability shared by all great art -- music, literature, drama, sculpture, painting -- to pull me out of whatever funk I'm in at the moment, whatever piddling, temporary example of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to that I am suffering, and remind me, as Keats says, that

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty: that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Thanks for asking. :-)

Answer 2

Unheard Melodies

Answer 3

This is my own interpretation and it may well be misguided: the idea is Platonic, just as Plato encourages the erastes (lover) to contemplate the beauty of the eromenos (the object of desire) as universal and immortal truth, instead of achieving "vulgar" (in his view not necessarily mine) sensuous gratification through copulation; so does Keats encourage the reader to take music out of the sensuous realm of sound and contemplate it as pure thought. But my powers of description are too meagre to express such ideals, so please read this extract from Thomas Mann s Doctor Faustus and you shall perhaps better understand my interpretation of this line:

"We say of course that music addresses itself to the ear ; but it does so only in a qualified way, only in so far, namely, as the hearing, like the other senses, is the deputy, the instrument, and the receiver of the mind. Perhaps, said Kretschmar, it was music s deepest wish not to be heard at all, nor even seen, nor yet felt; but only- if that were possible- in some Beyond, the other side of sense and sentiment, to be perceived and contemplated as pure mind, pure spirit. But bound as she was to the world of sense, music must ever strive after the strongest, yes, the most seductive of sensuous realisation: she is a Kundry, who wills not what she does and flings soft arms of lust round the neck of the fool.... Here, rightly she was the penitent in the garb of the seductress .

Answer 4

tell her how lots she potential to. tell her that your coronary heart melts everytime she seems deep into your eyes. specifically, tell her precisely what your coronary heart feels. do no longer say what I instructed you too, if that's no longer the variety you sense. If all else fails, ascertain she is familiar with that in case you 2 ever separate, which you will possibly crumple. that's what a girl desires to hearken to. until eventually, they're being stalked. Then they do only no longer % to be around their stalker. LOL