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



carter

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 historical occupational role involving the transport of goods by cart, often referenced in poetry to evoke labor, trade, or rural economy.

Detailed Definition
The carter appears in poetry as a figure of rural commerce and steady labor. Historically vital to pre-railroad economies, carters moved grain, timber, and merchandise between towns. In verse, they evoke themes of journey, burden, and reliability. Poets use carters to ground narratives in the material world, celebrating the unsung labor that sustains communities and connects isolated places through the rhythm of the road.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Thomas Hardy’s rural verse, the carter’s wagon creaks along muddy lanes, bearing harvest or sorrow; John Clare depicts carters as unsung heroes of agricultural life; In 18th-century georgic poetry, carters move grain like veins in the body of the land; Victorian poets contrast the carter’s slow pace with railway speed; The carter in William Barnes’ Dorset dialect poems embodies regional identity; Carters appear in harvest hymns as laborers blessed by seasonal cycles.
Additional Notes
Carters were essential to pre-railroad logistics, moving agricultural produce, building materials, or goods between towns; often independent contractors, they formed part of the rural transport network—poetry may depict them as figures of endurance, freedom, or connection between urban and rural worlds; their slow, steady pace contrasts with modern speed, offering temporal commentary in historical verse.
Also Known As
cartman wagoner
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