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

beggar

Historical Office
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 person who lives by asking for money or food, often regulated or licensed in historical contexts

Detailed Definition
The beggar appears in poetry as a moral, social, and spiritual cipher. Historically both pitied and policed, beggars challenged notions of charity, idleness, and divine will. In verse—from medieval allegories to Romantic laments—they embody poverty, humility, or societal failure. Poets use beggars to question justice, evoke compassion, or reflect on the human condition stripped of status, making them enduring figures of ethical and existential inquiry.
Example
Example in poetry:
In William Blake’s "London," the beggar’s cry reveals systemic neglect beneath urban grandeur; John Clare’s poems portray beggars as displaced rural folk stripped of dignity; Thomas Gray’s "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" humanizes the “mute inglorious” beggar; In medieval morality plays rendered in verse, the beggar often embodies Fortune’s caprice; Victorian poets like Coventry Patmore contrast beggars with bourgeois comfort to critique charity; The beggar in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s "Queen Mab" symbolizes the moral cost of inequality.
Additional Notes
Begging was not merely poverty but a regulated social role in many pre-modern societies; some beggars held licenses (e.g., “bedesmen” in Scotland), while others were part of religious orders like mendicants—poetry frequently uses beggars as moral mirrors, symbols of humility, or critiques of social neglect; understanding historical licensing and stigma helps interpret their complex literary presence beyond simple destitution.
Also Known As
pauper vagrant mendicant gaberlunzie tatterdemalion bezonian lazar
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