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

bear-baiting

Games
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

Bear-baiting is a historical blood sport in which a chained bear is set upon by dogs for public entertainment.

Detailed Definition
Bear-baiting features in poetry as a vivid image of cruelty and the abuse of the powerless. Shakespeare and contemporaries reference it to evoke the spectacle of suffering and the moral degradation of the crowd. Poets use the chained bear and attacking dogs to symbolize tyranny, resistance, or the savage entertainment that mirrors human savagery in political and social arenas.
Example
Example in poetry:
Bear-baiting’s chained suffering and circling dogs supply poets with images of staged cruelty; Shakespeare and his contemporaries place the spectacle among the moral dangers of the city; “The bear stood in the ring while the dogs were loosed” illustrates public appetite for pain; Educational examples present the sport as a historical mirror of human savagery; Verse keeps the image when tyranny or mob pleasure must be condemned.
Additional Notes
Bear-baiting’s chained suffering and circling dogs supplied early modern poets with a ready image of staged cruelty and public appetite. The sport’s historical reality allows verse to condemn or to exploit the spectacle with equal force. Classroom discussion can usefully examine how the image migrates from literal description into political or moral allegory. Related blood sports include bull-baiting and cockfighting. The term remains potent because the powerlessness of the bear is never in doubt.
Also Known As
bearbaiting
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