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

Basilisk

Folklore
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 legendary serpent-like creature born from a rooster's egg, whose deadly gaze or breath kills instantly, symbolizing peril and corruption.

Detailed Definition
The Basilisk, from European medieval bestiaries like Pliny the Elder's accounts, is a chimeric reptile with a rooster's head and serpent body, capable of petrifying victims with its stare or poisonous exhalation, often slain by weasels or mirrors. It embodies sin and the devil's spawn, reflecting alchemical fears of hybrid monstrosity. In literature, it features in Shakespeare's "Richard III" as a metaphor for tyrannical evil, and in T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" for spiritual desolation. Poetry employs it to explore themes of toxic influence, forbidden knowledge, and moral decay, its gaze mirroring self-destructive introspection; writers like John Keats invoke similar serpentine horrors to delve into beauty's peril, making it a versatile emblem in gothic and symbolic verse for confronting humanity's darker impulses.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene," the Basilisk's deadly gaze kills Una's companions, symbolizing poisonous envy in allegorical poetry; Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" alludes to the Basilisk as a flirtatious peril, educating on satirical use of mythic monsters; Modern poets like Ted Hughes in "Birthday Letters" use Basilisk eyes to depict destructive love stares; A haiku might employ the Basilisk's petrifying glance to freeze time in moments of regret; In Sylvia Plath's "Medusa," the Basilisk parallels the Gorgon's stare, teaching mythic parallels in feminist verse; Folklore poets could invoke the Basilisk's desert origin to explore isolation in arid emotional landscapes.
Additional Notes
Basilisk, derived from Greek "basiliskos" (little king), combines rooster and serpent traits, vulnerable only to weasel venom or rooster crows; medieval bestiaries link it to sin's corruption, slain by reflection like Perseus' Medusa; poets like Edmund Spenser in "The Faerie Queene" use its gaze for allegories of poisonous envy; usage advice: symbolize petrifying stares in love poems to depict emotional paralysis; related terms: cockatrice (its winged variant) and regulus (crown motif); additional context: Pliny the Elder's accounts influenced Renaissance poetry, offering motifs for hubris and the dangers of unchecked power in nature.
Also Known As
serpent king lethal gaze cockatrice kin
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