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

Agate

Gemstones
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 banded chalcedony valued for its layered patterns, symbolizing balance and protection.

Detailed Definition
Agate’s rhythmic bands inspire poetic meditations on time, resilience, and inner harmony. Each layer tells a story of pressure and patience. Poets use agate to explore duality—strength in softness, chaos in order—or as a talisman for travelers navigating emotional or physical landscapes with steady grace.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Keats’s "Ode to Psyche," agate might symbolize the layered sanctity of the mind’s inner temple; Victorian mourning jewelry often featured banded agate to represent the strata of grief; a modern poet could write, “Her resolve was agate—banded, patient, unbroken by time”; in eco-poetry, agate’s geological rings may mirror tree rings, evoking deep time and resilience; Rilke might have used agate to describe the soul’s concentric growth through suffering; contemporary verse may liken emotional boundaries to agate’s protective, polished surface.
Additional Notes
Agate is a banded variety of chalcedony, known for its concentric layers of color that can range from subtle earth tones to vivid hues; historically used in cameos and intaglios, agate symbolizes balance and harmony in poetry and is often associated with protection and grounding—its layered structure can serve as a metaphor for complexity, time, or hidden truths in literary works.
Also Known As
banded chalcedony colorful layers protective amulet
Skip to main content