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

batten

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

To grow fat, thrive, or prosper, often at another's expense; suggests feeding greedily or enriching oneself through exploitation, as in "batten on corruption."

Detailed Definition
“Batten” implies greedy flourishing, especially in phrases like “batten on.” In poetry, it critiques parasitic power—kings, clergy, or lovers who feed on others’ labor or love. Its visceral connotation suits satirical or political verse, where excess contrasts with suffering. The word’s blunt sound reinforces moral disgust, making it effective in invective or social commentary from Jonson to Blake.
Example
Example in poetry:
"They batten on the spoils of war," wrote a satirist of corrupt generals; In Shakespeare’s Macbeth: "The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan / Under my battlements"—later editors note "batten" implies feeding greedily; "Batten not on flattery, lest it rot thy soul," advises a moral epistle; Milton uses "batten" to describe demons feasting on sin; "The courtiers batten on the people’s toil," cries the reformer-poet; Wolves batten in the dark, while lambs sleep unaware.
Additional Notes
“Batten” implies thriving through exploitation—e.g., “batten on the labor of others”—and carries moral censure; in political or satirical verse, it critiques greed, especially among clergy or nobility, linking corpulence to corruption.
Also Known As
feed fatten thrive hatch
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