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.

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

Allegory

Rhetorical Devices
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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 narrative or image system that carries a second, extended meaning. Characters and events often represent abstract ideas.

Detailed Definition
Allegory presents a literal story while inviting readers to interpret it as a sustained representation of something else, such as political conflict, spiritual struggle, moral development, or historical change. In poetry, a journey may stand for life, a prison for inward guilt, or a garden for a lost ideal. Unlike a brief metaphor, allegory operates across many details, creating a double structure in which the visible action and the implied meaning continually illuminate one another.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, knights and quests represent virtues, vices, and spiritual struggles; George Orwell’s Animal Farm uses farm animals and their rebellion as an allegory of political revolution and tyranny; “The city is a labyrinth where every locked door is fear” can allegorize a speaker’s inner life; A poem about a ship crossing a stormy sea may allegorically portray a soul seeking salvation
Additional Notes
Allegory works on both a literal and a symbolic level. A journey, conflict, or character may represent ideas such as virtue, oppression, faith, or mortality. Unlike a brief symbol, allegory usually develops its second meaning across a whole work.
Other Meanings of “Allegory”
Also Known As
Extended Metaphor Continued Metaphor
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