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 F

Farthing

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 very small British coin worth a quarter of a penny, symbol of tiny sums and extreme thrift or poverty.

Detailed Definition
The farthing served as Britain’s smallest coin for centuries, used for the most modest purchases. Its minuteness made it a natural metaphor for almost negligible value, yet for the poor it represented real buying power. In poetry, “farthing” appears in depictions of charity, parsimony, or urban and rural poverty, where every coin counts. Poets may contrast farthings with gold pieces to highlight social inequality or to praise small acts of generosity. Its faint, tinkling presence in verse helps convey the textures of everyday life in pre-decimal Britain.
Example
Example in poetry:
She gave her last farthing to the beggar and gained a kingdom in the poet’s eyes; Not worth a farthing, they said of his dreams, yet he kept them all the same; The tinkling farthing on the plate rang louder than the gold of the proud; Poets choose farthings to show how the smallest coin may carry the greatest moral weight.
Additional Notes
Farthing epitomises tiny value in British culture, hence its recurrent use in idioms and literary depictions of poverty or careful thrift. In Victorian and earlier poetry, farthings might buy a candle, a crust, or a moment’s respite from cold. Modern poets can exploit this history to contrast the negligible sum with its emotional or moral significance—for example, a widow’s farthing of charity. The coin’s obsolescence also makes it a symbol of bygone street life and children’s economies. It works well in teaching to show how currency names become metaphors for scale and worth.
Also Known As
farthing coin quarter-penny
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