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 C

Cannon

Military
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 cannon is a large, mounted gun that fires heavy projectiles, historically central to siege and battlefield warfare.

Detailed Definition
The cannon has long symbolized the thunderous, destructive power of organized warfare in poetic tradition, its "cannon's mouth" appearing famously in Shakespeare's As You Like It as an image of reckless martial ambition. Tennyson's "Cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them" in "The Charge of the Light Brigade" captures the encircling terror of artillery fire. The cannon remains a resonant image for overwhelming, mechanized violence throughout literary history.
Example
Example in poetry:
Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" famously repeats cannon imagery to convey encircling danger; A poem might describe the deep boom of cannon fire echoing across a historic battlefield; Poets use "cannon" to symbolize the thunderous, impersonal power of organized warfare; A verse could contrast the cannon's mechanical precision with the human chaos it unleashes; Shakespeare's As You Like It uses the phrase describing reckless ambition seeking the cannon's mouth; A poem might depict abandoned cannons as relics, silent witnesses to past devastation.
Additional Notes
A cannon is a large, mounted gun that fires heavy projectiles, historically central to siege and battlefield warfare. Cannons revolutionized warfare from the fourteenth century onward, rendering medieval castles obsolete and shaping the modern battlefield. Cannon technology evolved from bronze and iron muzzle-loaders to rifled breech-loaders, with ever-increasing range and accuracy. In poetry, the cannon symbolizes raw, mechanical power—the thunderous voice of war that drowns out human speech. The "cannon's mouth" evokes the danger of direct exposure to fire. Related terms include artillery, howitzer, and culverin. The cannon's role as a siege weapon, battering walls and breaching defenses, has made it a symbol of overwhelming force. Famous cannons, like "Big Bertha" or the "Paris Gun," represent the extremes of military engineering and the ambition to strike from impossible distances.
Also Known As
Gun Field Gun Artillery Piece Ordnance Great Gun Battery Piece Howitzer
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