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

Fortuna

Mythology
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

Roman goddess of luck, chance, and fate, often depicted with a wheel

Detailed Definition
Fortuna governs the unpredictable turns of human fortune, both good and bad, symbolized by her ever-turning wheel. In Roman literature, from Cicero to Seneca, she represents the capriciousness of life and the limits of human control. Poets across eras—from medieval allegorists to Shakespeare and beyond—invoke Fortuna to explore themes of destiny, hubris, and the fragility of worldly success.
Example
Example in poetry:
Fortuna, goddess of chance, appears in Virgil’s Aeneid as “blind Fortuna” steering mortal fates; Ovid in Metamorphoses shows Fortuna “raising some, casting others down”; Seneca’s tragedies depict Fortuna as “fickle wheel” of unpredictable power; Horace warns in Odes: “Fortuna favors the bold, but abandons the reckless”; Juvenal’s Satires lament “Fortuna’s dice” governing wealth and ruin; In Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy (written in verse), Fortuna is unmasked as illusion.
Additional Notes
Fortuna, goddess of chance and fate, embodies the capriciousness of life; depicted with a wheel (rota Fortunae), rudder, or cornucopia; central to Roman philosophical poetry—Seneca, Horace, and later Boethius explore her fickleness; useful for themes of hubris, impermanence, and Stoic acceptance; students should distinguish between Fortuna as blind chance versus divine providence; she had multiple aspects (e.g., Fortuna Redux for safe returns); her Greek counterpart is Tyche, but Roman Fortuna is more integrated into civic and personal identity.
Also Known As
Lady Luck Rota Fortunae Chance Tyche
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