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

Asphodel

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

Pale, ghostly flower covering the Asphodel Meadows in Hades, where ordinary souls dwell in shadowy, joyless existence. Symbol of the colorless afterlife awaiting most mortals.

Detailed Definition
Asphodel grows in the meadows of the underworld, where ordinary souls dwell. In poetry, it symbolises death, remembrance, and the muted afterlife. Its pale bloom evokes both melancholy and continuity, making it a powerful emblem of mortality.
Example
Example in poetry:
Asphodel fields signify the neutral afterlife in Hades; Elegiac poets often place ordinary souls among asphodel; A line such as “wandering through asphodel” suggests muted eternity; The flower can symbolise pale remembrance.
Additional Notes
Asphodel holds profound significance in Greek conceptions of the afterlife as the flower covering the meadows where ordinary souls dwell in the underworld—neither rewarded in Elysium nor punished in Tartarus. These pale flowers symbolize the colorless, joyless existence of shades in Hades, a realm of shadowy half-life rather than vivid suffering or bliss. The plant's actual characteristics—pallid blooms and edible but unremarkable roots—made it apt for representing the neutral state of most dead. For students analyzing poetry about death, mourning, or the afterlife, asphodel evokes neither hope nor despair but rather the melancholic diminishment that Greeks associated with death's democracy. Homer's description of the "asphodel meadow" profoundly influenced Western literary conceptions of the afterlife. Modern poets from Milton to Tennyson have invoked asphodel to conjure Greek visions of death, and the flower remains emblematic of memory, loss, and the countless ordinary dead who inhabit mythology's margins.
Also Known As
Asphodelus Asphodel Meadows
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