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

Epergne

Ceramics
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

An epergne is a centerpiece stand for fruit or flowers, often with ceramic elements.

Detailed Definition
In the category of ceramics, epergnes create table focal points. Poets use for abundance and display.
Example
Example in poetry:
The epergne — an elaborate table centrepiece with branching arms holding baskets, candle-holders, or glass trumpets for fruit and sweetmeats — appears in Victorian poems as an emblem of table excess; A poem about a formal dinner might describe the epergne as "a silver tree of hospitality, its branches laden with hothouse grapes and forced flowers"; Dickens's Miss Havisham, with her rotting wedding feast, might have had an epergne at the table's centre — the branching arms now holding dust; In a poem about the aesthetic of accumulation, the epergne concentrates the Victorian passion for display: "nothing was enough unless it branched, unless it bore, unless it gleamed from every angle"; The epergne's name — from the French for economy, though nothing about it is economical — offers a poet an irony to work with; A verse elegy for the great Victorian dinner party might place the epergne at its centre: "the centrepiece of all that ceremony — the silver tree around which the conversation orbited and fell."
Additional Notes
The épergne (possibly from the French épargner, to save or set aside) is an elaborate centrepiece stand with branching arms supporting small dishes, baskets, or vases for fruit, sweetmeats, and flowers. Made in silver, glass, or ceramic combinations, the épergne was a showpiece of the Georgian and Victorian table, dominating the centre of the dining table and displaying the host's resources and taste. Large ceramic épergnes in Minton majolica or Worcester porcelain are particularly spectacular. In poetry and fiction, the épergne is a symbol of aristocratic or upper-middle-class abundance, the visual climax of the formal dinner.
Also Known As
Centrepiece Flower stand
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