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 B

bale

Nautical
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

In Nautical language, bale means to scoop or throw water out of a boat or ship, especially when it is leaking or taking on water.

Detailed Definition
To bale—more commonly spelled bail today in this sense—is to remove unwanted water from a vessel using buckets, pumps, hands, or other containers. Sailors bale when waves, storms, leaks, or damage cause water to collect inside the ship. In poetry, the word can heighten a scene of danger and labor at sea, emphasizing the crew’s urgent attempt to keep a vessel afloat.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “Forecastle Sailor or the Guardian Frigate,” the boatswain orders the crew to save the ship during a storm: “The boatswain pip'd all hands to bale her” Here, “bale her” means bail the ship out: every sailor is called to remove the seawater that has washed or leaked into the vessel. Later, the speaker says, “’twas no use for to bale her,” showing that the water is entering so quickly that the crew can no longer keep up.
Additional Notes
Bale is an older or variant spelling of bail when meaning “to remove water from a boat.” Modern dictionaries and Nautical writing usually prefer bail. Do not confuse this verb with bale meaning a large bound bundle of goods, such as a bale of hay or cotton. A related noun is bailer or bailout bucket, a tool used to scoop water from a small vessel. In the poem, bailing is not figurative: it is a practical survival task after the frigate is threatened by heavy seas and an ice island. The command “all hands to bale her” reflects traditional shipboard language, in which “all hands” means all available crew members.
Other Meanings of “bale”
Also Known As
Woe Sorrow Misfortune Bundle
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