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

Flodden

Battles
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 1513 battle where England defeated Scotland, resulting in the death of King James IV.

Detailed Definition
Flodden was a catastrophic loss for Scotland, deeply mourned in ballads and chronicles. In poetry, it represents national grief, the folly of war, and the fragility of sovereignty, often appearing in laments that blend personal sorrow with political consequence.
Example
Example in poetry:
The Battle of Flodden is lamented in “The Flowers of the Forest,” a Scottish ballad that mourns “The flowers of the forest are a’ wede away”; poets use Flodden to represent national tragedy and the loss of a king (James IV); modern verse revisits Flodden to explore grief and collective memory; Flodden appears in poetry as a cautionary tale of pride and misjudgment in war; educational settings use “The Flowers of the Forest” to teach elegiac form and historical context; some poets contrast Flodden’s sorrow with later Scottish resilience.
Additional Notes
Flodden (1513) saw the Scottish army, led by James IV, defeated by the English; the king’s death marked a national tragedy. The ballad “The Flowers of the Forest” remains a cornerstone of Scottish elegiac poetry, using pastoral imagery to mourn lost nobility. For students, Flodden illustrates how battle poetry can function as communal mourning. Its themes—hubris, loyalty, and generational loss—resonate in later war poetry. Compare its restrained grief with the graphic realism of WWI verse to trace evolving poetic responses to military disaster.
Also Known As
Battle of Flodden Flodden Field
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