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

bard

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 poet who composes and recites epic or lyric verse, especially in ancient Celtic and medieval cultures where bards held honored positions as oral historians.

Detailed Definition
Originally a Celtic oral poet-singer, the “bard” evolved into a Romantic symbol of inspired national voice. Poets like Wordsworth and Shelley reclaimed the term to elevate the poet’s role as truth-teller and cultural guardian. In archaic contexts, it connotes tradition, memory, and musicality. Its use in poetry often invokes muse-like authority or laments the loss of oral heritage, blending historical reverence with artistic idealism.
Example
Example in poetry:
"The bard sang of heroes long dead," in the tradition of oral epic; Shakespeare is hailed as "the Swan of Avon, matchless bard"; In Gray’s "The Bard," the last Welsh poet curses Edward I; Romantic poets revived "bard" to mean inspired national poet; "Hear, O king, the bard’s prophetic strain!" ; The Highland bard wept as he sang of Culloden.
Additional Notes
“Bard” originally denoted Celtic oral poets but was revived in the 18th century (e.g., by Gray and Macpherson) to elevate the poet as national prophet or seer; in Romanticism, it became synonymous with inspired, often melancholic, poetic voice.
Also Known As
poet minstrel skald The Minstrel Carew
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