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

Elegy

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 formal or lyrical poem that mourns the dead, reflects on mortality, or contemplates loss, often blending sorrow with consolation or praise.

Explore this topic in depth (5)

The Elegy: Poetry of Loss, Memory and Address — An elegy is a poem shaped by loss: it attends to someone or something absent, and asks what it means to remember. This guide explores its long history, changing forms and sounds, from intimate mourning to public grief.

Death and Mortality in Poetry — Poetry has long given people ways to face death: with sorrow, prayer, anger, wit, tenderness and attention to the living world. This guide explores mortality as a broad theme, from elegy and remembrance to ageing, doubt and the music of silence.

Memento Mori: Poetry and the Reminder of Death — Memento mori poetry asks readers to remember that life is finite. This guide explores the tradition’s history, imagery, forms, and emotional range, with practical ways to read poems about death without reducing them to gloom.

Love Poetry — From the courtly conventions of the troubadours to the plain-spoken intimacy of modern verse, love poetry has never stopped changing shape. This guide traces its history and offers practical ways to read it closely.

Victorian Poetry — Victorian poetry developed during a period of rapid social, scientific and industrial change. It includes intimate lyrics, public arguments, narrative poems and unsettling dramatic speakers, rather than a single uniform style.

Detailed Definition
Elegy is a meditative poem lamenting the dead or reflecting on mortality, often moving from grief through consolation to affirmation; evolving from classical pastoral conventions (e.g., Theocritus) to modern personal forms (e.g., Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”), it balances sorrow with lyrical dignity.
Example
Example in poetry:
Milton’s “Lycidas” mourns a drowned friend with pastoral conventions and divine consolation; W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” blends public and personal grief in modern elegiac form; Mary Jo Bang’s “Elegy” reimagines the genre through contemporary grief and pop culture; Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Duino Elegies” transform personal sorrow into metaphysical meditation; Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me” functions as an elegy for silenced Black women’s voices; Dylan Thomas’s “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London” subverts traditional elegiac closure.
Additional Notes
Elegy is a poem of serious reflection, typically mourning the dead; classical elegies use elegiac couplets (dactylic hexameter + pentameter), while modern elegies (e.g., by Hardy or Heaney) often use free verse and focus on personal grief.
Other Meanings of “Elegy”
Also Known As
Lament Funeral poem Mourning verse Threnody Mourning poem Élégie marbhna tuireamh
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