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

Dr Faustus

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

A legendary scholar who bargains with the devil for knowledge and power; in poetry, he embodies the Renaissance hubris, the conflict between ambition and damnation, and the human yearning for the forbidden.

Detailed Definition
Dr Faustus, from German folklore and Marlowe’s tragedy, symbolises intellectual hubris and the tragic price of forbidden knowledge. In poetry, he embodies the eternal conflict between human aspiration and moral limitation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Dr Faustus: Faustus’ pact with Mephistopheles inspires poets to explore the cost of forbidden knowledge: “He sold his soul for one bright page— / and found the truth too vast to wage.”; His tragedy becomes metaphor for intellectual hubris: “He sought the stars, he broke the chain, / but found no peace in endless gain.”; Poets borrow his desperation: “I asked for power, not for grace, / and now I scream in empty space.”; His final monologue models existential dread: “The clock ticks down, the ink runs dry— / no god will hear, no soul will fly.”; Faustus teaches poets how to make damnation intimate: “Not fire, not chains—but silence, slow, / and knowing you outgrew the glow.”; His legacy: “He did not burn—he simply knew / the light he sought was never true.”
Additional Notes
Dr. Faustus, the archetypal scholar who trades his soul for knowledge, became a central myth in Romantic and modern poetry; his bargain with the devil symbolizes the perilous pursuit of forbidden wisdom, appearing in works by Marlowe, Goethe, and Thomas Mann, and offering poets a framework to explore ambition, transgression, and the limits of human aspiration.
Also Known As
Faustus Dr. Faust
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