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

Aster

Flora
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 daisy-like flower with ray petals surrounding a yellow center, blooming in late summer in shades of purple, pink, or white.

Detailed Definition
Aster, named for "star" in Greek, symbolizes love, patience, and elegance in poetry. As a late-blooming flower, it represents autumn's beauty, persistence, and the gifts that come with maturity or lateness. In Victorian flower language, asters convey daintiness and afterthought. Poets employ asters to suggest stars fallen to earth, the compensation of autumn for summer's passing, or faithful love that endures through seasonal change. Their starlike form connects earthly and celestial beauty.
Example
Example in poetry:
Aster flowers blooming late in the season represent patience, elegance, and the beauty of autumn in garden poetry; The star-shaped blooms give asters their name (from Greek "star") and inspire celestial metaphors in verse; In Victorian flower language poems, asters symbolize daintiness, afterthought, or variety due to their many colors; September and October birthday poems often feature asters as birth flowers representing love and wisdom; The aster's ability to bloom when other flowers fade makes it a symbol of endurance and late-blooming success; New England asters in particular appear in American poetry celebrating native wildflowers and autumn landscapes
Additional Notes
Aster blooms late in the year, so it frequently symbolises patience, farewell, or autumnal reflection. Its star-like form underlies its name, connecting it to celestial imagery. In pastoral verse it marks the turning season, while its purple and pink tones lend themselves to gentle melancholy or subdued hope at summer’s close.
Also Known As
Michaelmas Daisy Starwort
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