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

apothecary

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 historical term for a person who prepared and sold medicines and drugs, similar to a modern pharmacist.

Detailed Definition
In earlier centuries, an apothecary was a medical professional who compounded and dispensed herbal remedies, potions, and early pharmaceuticals, often serving as a primary healthcare provider before the rise of modern medicine. The term appears in poetry and drama—most famously in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”—to evoke settings of secrecy, mortality, or alchemical mystery. Apothecaries were associated with knowledge of both healing and poison, making them potent symbols in literary contexts exploring themes of life, death, and moral ambiguity. Their shops, filled with exotic ingredients and arcane tools, provided rich imagery for poets seeking to convey atmosphere, danger, or hidden wisdom.
Example
Example in poetry:
To the apothecary's shop he went for healing herbs and draughts (medieval pharmacist); The poor apothecary sold his deadly poison for forty ducats (Romeo and Juliet reference); In the apothecary's darkened room stood bottles strange and rare (setting atmospheric scene); The apothecary mixed his potions by candlelight (showing the profession); Seek ye the apothecary for remedy of your ills (directing someone to the druggist); The village apothecary knew every plant that heals or harms (establishing character)
Additional Notes
Apothecary shops were central to medieval and Renaissance communities, often doubling as general stores. In Romeo and Juliet, the Apothecary scene (Act 5) shows their poverty and moral compromise. Apothecaries prepared medicines from herbs, minerals, and animal products according to recipes in pharmacopoeias. They occupied an ambiguous social position between merchants and medical practitioners, sometimes rivaling physicians who diagnosed but didn't dispense. In poetry, apothecaries often symbolize healing knowledge, mysterious potions, or the boundary between life and death. Keats himself trained as an apothecary before becoming a poet. The term persists in "apothecary jar" for decorative pharmaceutical containers.
Also Known As
apothicary pothecary druggist
Skip to main content