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

Belief

Philosophy
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

Belief is the acceptance of something as true, often without complete proof. It underpins faith, conviction, and interpretation.

Detailed Definition
Philosophically, belief bridges knowledge and uncertainty, shaping how individuals interpret reality. In poetry, belief appears in spiritual, emotional, and ideological contexts, often explored through doubt, affirmation, or questioning. Poets use belief to examine trust, illusion, and the human need for meaning, making it central to metaphysical and lyrical traditions.
Example
Example in poetry:
Hume's empiricist analysis of belief — as a lively idea associated with a present impression — challenges poetry that claims belief in transcendent realities, and poets like Hardy responded with a rigorous honesty about the impossibility of sustaining traditional religious belief; In "In Memoriam," Tennyson dramatizes the philosophical struggle to maintain belief in immortality and providential order in the face of grief and geological time, making the long poem a philosophical investigation of the conditions and limits of belief; Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" raises the question of aesthetic belief — can the beauty of the artwork ground a belief in truth? — enacting the philosophical tension between aesthetic experience and propositional knowledge; William James's pragmatist philosophy of belief — the "will to believe," the idea that beliefs are tools for living rather than mirrors of reality — has influenced American poets who treat poetic affirmations not as metaphysical claims but as enabling fictions; A poet in a secular age might explore what Coleridge called "willing suspension of disbelief" as a philosophical model for all belief — not just aesthetic, but religious, political, and interpersonal — making the poem a meditation on the conditions of trust; Wallace Stevens's "supreme fiction" is precisely a philosophical account of belief after the death of God — the poet must construct beliefs knowing them to be fictions, sustaining them not because they are true but because they are necessary
Additional Notes
Belief is analyzed in philosophy across epistemology, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind. The classical "justified true belief" account of knowledge (Plato's Meno and Theaetetus) makes belief the genus of which knowledge is a species — knowledge is belief that is both true and appropriately justified. Hume's empiricist analysis treats belief as a lively idea associated with a present impression — belief is a feeling of conviction rather than a logical state. Wittgenstein's "On Certainty" challenges the epistemological framework altogether: our most basic certainties are not beliefs at all but the hinge-propositions that make belief possible. William James's pragmatism treats belief instrumentally: the right to believe is justified by a belief's capacity to guide action and sustain life. For poets, belief operates at multiple levels — religious belief, aesthetic conviction, the ethical commitment that animates the poem. Related terms: knowledge, justified true belief, faith, conviction, pragmatism, Wittgenstein's hinge-propositions.
Also Known As
Faith
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