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

beguile

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 verb meaning to deceive, mislead, or charm someone through cunning or charm; also to pass time pleasantly, making it seem shorter.

Detailed Definition
"Beguile" combines "be-" with "guile" (deceit, cunning), meaning primarily to deceive through charm or cunning, though it also means to while away time pleasantly. This dual nature—both deception and pleasant distraction—made it rich for poetic exploration. Seducers beguiled victims, entertainments beguiled hours, appearances beguiled judgment. The term appears frequently in contexts of love, time, and illusion, where boundaries between harmless charm and dangerous deception blur. Poets valued its ambiguity, which allowed exploration of how pleasure and deception intertwine, how charm can serve good or ill purposes. Shakespeare employed "beguile" extensively in comedies and tragedies where characters consciously or unconsciously mislead others or themselves. The word's suggestion of both artifice and entertainment made it essential for themes of appearance, reality, and the seductive power of art itself.
Example
Example in poetry:
Sweet music and wine beguile the weary hours; The siren's song beguiles sailors to their doom; "Let not false promises beguile thy heart" warns the poet; Pleasant dreams beguile us through the darkest night; The enchantress would beguile knights with her beauty; Time's passage beguiles us into forgetting our mortality
Additional Notes
Beguile demonstrates semantic richness across literary periods, encompassing both negative deception and positive enchantment. In medieval romance, it often describes courtly seduction or magical enthrallment. Shakespeare exploits both meanings: lago beguiles Othello (deceives), while music beguiles time (pleasantly passes). The term's dual nature makes it crucial for analyzing ambiguous characters and situations. Etymology from "guile" (cunning) with causative prefix. Related concepts include "beguilement" (the act or state) and "beguiling" (adjective suggesting attractive deceptiveness). Essential for discussing temptation scenes, time's passage in pastoral poetry, or the tension between appearance and reality. The French "beguile" influenced English usage, adding sophistication to the concept of charming deception.
Also Known As
deceive delude charm entice mislead
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