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

Aedon

Mythology
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

Wife of Zethus who accidentally killed her son and was changed into a nightingale; her myth explains the bird’s mournful song as an eternal lament.

Detailed Definition
Aedon, wife of King Zethus of Thebes, accidentally killed her son while intending to kill her sister-in-law’s child. Grief-stricken, she was turned into a nightingale, eternally mourning. Her myth, recounted in various sources including Ovid, symbolizes maternal grief and remorse, frequently appearing in elegiac poetry as a voice of sorrow.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells how Aedon, transformed into a nightingale, mourns her slain son Itylus; In Sophocles’ lost tragedy Tereus, Aedon’s story parallels Philomela’s; Pausanias references Aedon in his Description of Greece as a cautionary tale of jealousy; Aedon appears in later pastoral poetry as a symbol of eternal maternal grief; Greek lyric fragments compare Aedon’s lament to the song of the nightingale.
Additional Notes
Aedon (“nightingale”) is a tragic figure from Greek myth who, in a fit of jealousy or confusion, kills her son Itylus and is transformed into a nightingale, forever lamenting her loss. Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book 6) conflates her with Procne, but earlier sources (e.g., Sophocles’ Tereus) distinguish them. Her song becomes a poetic symbol of eternal grief and maternal sorrow. Students should explore how bird metamorphoses in Ovid serve as emotional and sonic metaphors. The nightingale’s voice in later poetry (e.g., Keats) often echoes Aedon’s myth. Related: Philomela, Procne, avian symbolism.
Also Known As
Aedon the Nightingale Queen Aedon Tragic Songstress Wife of Zethus
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