A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter A

actus

Archaic Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A Roman unit of length equal to 120 Roman feet or approximately 116 English feet; used primarily in land surveying.

Detailed Definition
The actus, from Latin "agere" (to drive), originally referred to the length an ox could plow before needing to turn—120 Roman feet (about 116 English feet). This agricultural origin made it fundamental to Roman land measurement and surveying. As a square measure, one actus quadratus equaled about 14,400 square Roman feet. The actus appears in Latin agricultural poetry (Virgil's "Georgics") and texts concerning Roman land law and colonization. English poets treating Roman agricultural life, legal systems, or military settlement employed actus to ground descriptions in authentic practice, connecting measurement to ox-team plowing and Rome's agrarian foundations.
Example
Example in poetry:
Virgil's Georgics references the actus when describing the systematic layout of Roman farmland and the daily labor of plowing; In poetry about Roman colonization, "thirty actus of cleared land" conveys the methodical organization of new settlements; Historical verse might describe "the actus turned, the oxen pausing" to capture the rhythm of agricultural work; Translators of Roman agricultural poetry preserve "actus" to maintain the connection between measurement and ox-drawn plowing; A poet exploring themes of empire and agriculture could write "each actus measured, each furrow claimed" to show Roman systematization of conquered lands; Modern poets addressing land ownership might invoke the actus to connect contemporary property divisions to ancient practices of measurement and possession.
Additional Notes
The actus represents one of Rome's fundamental land measurements, literally meaning "a drive" or "furrow" because it originally measured the length an ox team could plow before needing to turn. Understanding that 2 actus = 1 jugerum helps students grasp Roman agricultural geometry. The actus quadratus (square actus) was used for smaller land parcels, while the jugerum (2 actus long by 1 actus wide) was more common for field measurement. Virgil's Georgics uses actus naturally when describing farm layout and land division, making it essential for translating or understanding Latin agricultural poetry. Students should recognize how Roman measurements connected abstract numbers to physical labor—the actus embodied the practical limits of ox-team plowing. In poetry, the actus can represent both Roman organizational precision and the connection between measurement and agricultural work. The term appears in Roman land surveys and colonial settlement documents, reflecting empire-building through systematic measurement.
Also Known As
act
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