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 D

Devotional chant

Form
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 rhythmic, often repetitive poem expressing religious devotion; it is intended for communal or private prayer, using chant-like repetition, parallelism, and a meditative cadence to deepen spiritual focus.

Detailed Definition
A devotional chant is a repetitive, incantatory poem or stanza used in religious or spiritual practice, characterized by rhythmic regularity, sacred imagery, and direct address to the divine; it aims to induce meditative states, communal unity, or transcendent experience through sonic and linguistic ritual.
Example
Example in poetry:
George Herbert’s “Prayer (I)” functions as a devotional chant through liturgical repetition and sacred imagery; Thomas Merton’s “Hagia Sophia” uses devotional chant structure to praise divine wisdom; Rumi’s ghazals, in translation, often retain devotional chant qualities through refrain and spiritual longing; Hildegard of Bingen’s “O viridissima virga” exemplifies medieval devotional chant in poetic form
Additional Notes
Devotional chant blends prayer-like repetition with lyrical intensity, often using anaphora or refrain; rooted in religious traditions but adapted by secular poets for meditative or solemn effects.
Also Known As
Sacred hymn Prayerful verse Liturgical invocation devotional hymn Sacred chant
Skip to main content