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.

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

bobolink

Birds
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 small North American songbird known for its bubbling, melodious call and striking black-and-white breeding plumage.

Detailed Definition
The bobolink appears in poetry—particularly 19th- and early 20th-century American verse—as a symbol of rural idyll, seasonal change, and the fleeting joy of spring and summer. Its exuberant song and migratory habits evoke themes of transience, freedom, and the pastoral landscape. Poets such as Emily Dickinson and William Cullen Bryant used the bobolink to contrast natural spontaneity against human constraint or to capture the emotional resonance of fleeting beauty. Its name itself, onomatopoeic and playful, enhances its literary appeal as a creature of lightness and lyrical abandon.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Elizabeth Stoddard’s “August,” the bobolink’s fledglings “pipe” amid ripe berries and full acorns, symbolizing the peak of summer’s fertility and the vitality of natural cycles; Poets use the bobolink’s distinctive, bubbling song to evoke joy, spontaneity, and the ephemeral beauty of meadow landscapes in late spring and early summer; William Cullen Bryant’s “Robert of Lincoln” personifies the bobolink as an exuberant, chattering figure whose rapid-fire song reflects the exuberance of the season; The bobolink’s long migration—from North American grasslands to South American wintering grounds—makes it a poetic symbol of transience, endurance, and the rhythm of seasonal return; In ecopoetry, the bobolink often represents vulnerable grassland ecosystems, its presence signaling biodiversity and the quiet fragility of agricultural habitats; Contemporary poets may contrast the bobolink’s wild, unrestrained melody with human silence or restraint, using the bird as a foil to explore themes of freedom, expression, and belonging in nature.
Additional Notes
The bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) is not only notable for its striking reversed plumage—males are black below and white above, unlike most birds—but also for its extraordinary song, often described as a bubbling cascade of notes that inspired poets to associate it with pastoral joy and seasonal abundance; historically common in hayfields and tallgrass prairies of eastern North America, its presence in 19th-century poetry (e.g., Bryant’s “Robert of Lincoln” and Stoddard’s “August”) links it to agrarian ideals and the fleeting beauty of summer; its dramatic migration—up to 12,000 miles round-trip to southern South America—adds layers of symbolism around endurance, impermanence, and cyclical return; in contemporary ecopoetics, the bobolink often serves as an indicator species, its declining numbers reflecting broader environmental concerns about habitat loss due to intensive agriculture; related poetic birds with thematic resonance include the meadowlark (shared grassland habitat), the skylark (celebrated song), and the swallow (migratory symbolism); for poetry students, the bobolink offers a rich case study in how ornithological accuracy, sensory detail (especially sound), and ecological awareness converge in literary imagery.
Also Known As
Reedbird Ricebird Skunk blackbird Dolichonyx oryzivorus
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