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

embrue

Archaic Terms
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 verb meaning to stain or drench with blood; to wet or soak thoroughly, especially with gore, used in violent or martial contexts.

Detailed Definition
"Embrue" (also "imbrue") derives from French "embreuver," meaning to soak or drench, but in English became particularly associated with blood-staining. Epic and martial poetry employed it when describing battle's aftermath—weapons embrued with blood, hands embrued in slaughter. The term's specificity—not just stained but soaked, particularly with blood—made it valuable for violent scenes requiring elevated language. Its Romance origin gave it formal dignity appropriate to epic verse where warfare received ceremonial description. Poets used "embrue" when raw violence needed dignified expression, when gore required linguistic elevation. The word appears in contexts of revenge, battle, and sacrifice where blood-letting carried ritual or symbolic significance. Its archaic quality suited heroic genres where combat was central and required vocabulary combining precision with appropriately elevated register for serious martial themes.
Example
Example in poetry:
The warrior's sword was embrued with enemy blood; "His hands embrued in crimson gore" depicts battle; The sacrifice embrues the altar with sacred blood; To embrue means to stain or drench thoroughly; The tyrant's reign embrued the land in violence; Spenser uses embrue frequently in battle scenes
Additional Notes
Embrue appears primarily in epic and martial poetry, particularly in violent battle scenes and revenge tragedies. Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare employ it for weapons, hands, or earth soaked with blood. The term's specificity (not merely "wet" but "bloodied") intensifies violent imagery. Related to "imbrue" (variant spelling) and conceptually to "incarnadine." Etymology from Old French "embreuver" (to soak). Essential for analyzing violence representation, martial imagery, and the aesthetics of bloodshed in literature. The term appears in both heroic contexts (glorious battle) and tragic contexts (revenge, murder). Useful for discussing how literature makes violence visible through specific diction and whether such language glorifies or critiques bloodshed. Its archaic quality distances modern readers from violence it describes.
Also Known As
stain dye tint tarnish
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