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

Alabaster

Colours
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

Alabaster denotes a smooth, translucent white with a soft, almost luminous quality, frequently used for skin or pure surfaces.

Detailed Definition
Alabaster is the fine-grained gypsum stone prized in classical sculpture for its creamy, light-diffusing surface. Poets adopt the term to describe flawless complexion, marble monuments, or ethereal light, as in Keats’s “alabaster” brows or Shakespeare’s “alabaster” statues. Its literary power lies in suggesting both cold perfection and fragile beauty, allowing writers to convey purity, deathlike stillness, or idealized form without resorting to ordinary white.
Example
Example in poetry:
Keats describes an “alabaster steed” whose polished white surface gleams with heroic purity; Shakespeare’s “alabaster” images of statues or cold flesh convey both idealized beauty and deathlike stillness; A modern poet might write “her alabaster shoulders caught the candlelight like carved stone,” merging classical sculpture with living skin; In elegiac verse “the alabaster urn of morning” can suggest fragile permanence and the quiet aftermath of grief; Educational practice: pair “alabaster” with light verbs—“glowed,” “held,” “reflected”—to emphasize its translucent, light-bearing quality.
Additional Notes
Alabaster’s classical origin in Greek and Roman sculpture makes it ideal for conveying idealized, almost statuesque beauty or cold purity. In poetry it frequently describes skin, monuments, or moonlight with a soft translucence that ordinary white lacks. Usage tip: combine with verbs of glowing or holding light to emphasize its luminous quality. Related concepts include ivory and marble, yet alabaster remains warmer and more delicate. Professors can note its frequent appearance in Romantic and Victorian verse as a marker of both perfection and deathlike stillness, inviting analysis of the tension between living flesh and carved stone.
Also Known As
Alabaster White Pure White Translucent Stone Marble White ivorie
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