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

Cato

Historical Figure
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

Roman statesman famed for his rigid Stoic virtue and opposition to Caesar

Detailed Definition
Cato the Younger chose suicide over submission to tyranny, becoming a martyr for republican liberty. His inflexibility made him both admired and criticized. Poets invoke him as the ultimate Stoic hero, symbolizing moral absolutism, resistance to corruption, and the tragic nobility of unwavering principle.
Example
Example in poetry:
Cato the Younger appears in Roman and later poetry as the stoic defender of the Republic; Lucan’s “Pharsalia” portrays Cato as a moral beacon amid civil war; Poets use Cato to symbolize uncompromising principle; In Enlightenment verse, Cato becomes a model for republican virtue (e.g., Addison’s play); Modern poets reference Cato’s suicide as the ultimate act of liberty; His opposition to Caesar inspires poems on resistance to tyranny.
Additional Notes
Cato the Younger (95–46 BCE), staunch defender of the Roman Republic, opposed Caesar and chose suicide over surrender; he became a Stoic martyr for liberty; in poetry, Cato symbolizes inflexible virtue, republican integrity, or principled resistance—celebrated by Lucan, Addison’s play “Cato,” and Enlightenment poets (e.g., in works by Akenside or as a model for American revolutionary rhetoric).
Also Known As
Cato the Elder Marcus Porcius Cato; Cato the Younger Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis
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