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

friar

Historical Office
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 member of a mendicant religious order, such as the Franciscans or Dominicans, who lives by begging and preaching

Detailed Definition
The friar appears in poetry as a complex figure of piety, hypocrisy, or social engagement. Historically active in towns rather than monasteries, friars bridged church and laity. In verse—from Chaucer’s satirical portrait to devotional works—they embody charity, learning, or moral laxity. Poets use friars to examine the challenges of living faith in the world, often highlighting the gap between spiritual ideals and human frailty.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Chaucer’s "The Friar’s Tale," the friar embodies corrupt church influence; William Langland’s "Piers Plowman" contrasts true and false friars in moral verse; Victorian poets like Matthew Arnold mourn the friar’s vanished pastoral role; The friar in Robert Browning’s "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" hides envy beneath piety; Friars appear in pilgrimage poems offering confession and alms; Their begging bowls symbolize humility or hypocrisy in satirical verse.
Additional Notes
Friars (Franciscans, Dominicans, etc.) took vows of poverty and preached while begging; unlike monks, they engaged with urban society—Chaucer’s Friar satirizes hypocrisy, but friars also appear as compassionate figures; understanding their mendicant mission clarifies tensions between spiritual idealism and institutional corruption in religious poetry.
Also Known As
brother The Monk
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