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 E

Echo

Mythology
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 mountain nymph in Greek myth cursed by Hera to only repeat the final words spoken to her; famously pined for Narcissus in vain.

Explore this topic in depth (1)

Allusion in Poetry — An allusion is a meaningful reference beyond the poem: to a story, person, place, song, belief or earlier work. This guide offers ways to notice and explore such references without treating poetry as a test of what you already know.

Detailed Definition
Echo, punished by Hera for distracting her from Zeus’s affairs, could only echo others’ words. She pined for Narcissus and faded away, leaving only her voice. In poetry, Echo symbolizes unrequited love, the loss of voice, and the haunting persistence of memory and sound.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Ovid’s "Metamorphoses," Echo fades to a voice after unrequited love for Narcissus; In T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” Echo’s voice fragments in modern alienation; In H.D.’s “Echo,” the nymph reclaims lyrical presence despite bodily absence; In W.H. Auden’s “The Sea and the Mirror,” Echo symbolizes poetic repetition and longing; In modern feminist poetry, Echo often represents marginalized female speech; In Louise Glück’s “The Triumph of Achilles,” Echo’s silence critiques gendered erasure.
Additional Notes
Echo, the nymph cursed to only repeat others’ words, symbolizes unrequited love, voicelessness, and the fragmentation of self; poets use her to explore themes of longing, the limits of language, and the echo as poetic device (repetition, resonance)—her fading body (leaving only voice) mirrors the poet’s anxiety about presence, memory, and the ephemeral nature of sound.
Also Known As
Nymph of Repetition Voice Without Form Lover of Narcissus Resonance Imitation
Skip to main content