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



Civic Order

Metaphysics
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

The metaphysical principle that society, nature, and the cosmos function according to organized hierarchical systems reflecting divine order. This reflects Renaissance beliefs in interconnected realms governed by universal laws and divine will.

Detailed Definition
Cosmic order provides metaphysical poets with a framework for understanding humanity's place within creation and divine governance. By exploring correspondence between individual conscience, social hierarchy, natural phenomena, and celestial mechanics, poets argue that all existence participates in a unified system reflecting God's rationality and purpose, making disorder or personal sin cosmic transgressions.
Example
Example in poetry:
John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” explores civic order through the rebellion in Heaven and its consequences; Alexander Pope’s “Windsor Forest” links natural harmony with political stability; W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” critiques the collapse of civic order amid war; Dante’s “Divine Comedy” structures the afterlife as a reflection of divine justice and social hierarchy; Phillis Wheatley’s poems often invoke civic virtue within a framework of Christian order; T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” mourns the fragmentation of civic and spiritual order in modernity.
Additional Notes
Civic Order in metaphysics relates to the macrocosm-microcosm analogy: societal harmony reflects cosmic or divine order; metaphysical poets invoke this to critique or affirm political structures—Donne’s “The Canonization” ironically elevates private love to saintly status, challenging civic norms while paradoxically reinforcing spiritual hierarchy as the true foundation of order.
Also Known As
Social Order Political Harmony Civil Harmony Public Sphere
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