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

Courage

Psychology
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

Moral or mental fortitude to confront fear, pain, danger, or uncertainty—often explored in poetry as resilience, resolve, or inner strength.

Detailed Definition
Courage is not the absence of fear but its confrontation. Poets portray it through defiant tone, heroic imagery, or quiet resolve, often situating it within personal or political resistance, thereby elevating ordinary resilience to the realm of the noble.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” courage defies historical oppression: “You may shoot me with your words… But still, like dust, I’ll rise”; In Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son,” courage is passed down through perseverance: “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair”; In Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est,” courage lies in truth-telling against patriotic lies; In Audre Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival,” courage means speaking despite fear; In Seamus Heaney’s “Digging,” courage is redefined as poetic labor honoring ancestral toil; In Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool,” courage masks vulnerability in youthful rebellion.
Additional Notes
Courage in poetry is rarely heroic spectacle but quiet persistence (Hughes’ “Mother to Son”) or truth-telling (Lorde’s “Power”); rooted in existential philosophy (facing absurdity) and social ethics; poetic techniques include declarative syntax, repetition, or understatement; students should analyze whether courage is individual or collective, physical or moral; note its link to vulnerability—true courage often admits fear.
Also Known As
Bravery Valor Fortitude Fearlessness Spunk valour gameness mettle
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