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

barrow

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 hill or mound, especially a burial mound from prehistoric times; also, a handcart.

Detailed Definition
In poetry, “barrow” often refers to ancient tumuli, evoking mystery, ancestry, and the passage of time. Romantic poets used it to meditate on mortality, forgotten civilizations, or the silence of the dead. Its dual meaning—earthwork and cart—allows wordplay between burden and monument, making it potent in elegies or historical reflections on transience.
Example
Example in poetry:
The barrow sleeps where Bronze Age kings were laid; On yonder barrow, lovers carve their names in vain; The shepherd dreams on barrow, ‘neath moon’s pale eye; Ghosts walk the barrow when the north wind sighs
Additional Notes
“Barrow” can mean either a prehistoric burial mound or a handcart, offering rich poetic duality. As a mound, it evokes ancestry, mystery, and mortality—central to Romantic elegies and Gothic verse. As a cart, it suggests labor, humility, or transience. Poets like Hardy and Clare use barrows to meditate on time’s erasure of glory. The word’s simplicity belies its symbolic weight: it bridges earth and artifact, death and utility. Related terms include “tumulus,” “mound,” and “wain,” but “barrow” retains a uniquely British archaeological resonance.
Also Known As
mound wheelbarrow
Skip to main content