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 H

Hades

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

Greek god of the underworld and ruler of the dead, distinct from personified Death (Thanatos), presiding over souls in the afterlife.

Detailed Definition
Hades is the stern and reclusive ruler of the underworld, governing the realm of the dead in Greek mythology. Unlike the Christian Satan, he is not evil but embodies inevitability and the finality of death. Poets often reference Hades to explore themes of mortality, the afterlife, and the boundary between life and oblivion, especially in elegiac and meditative verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Homer’s "Odyssey," Hades is the shadowy realm where heroes’ shades dwell; In Virgil’s "Aeneid," Hades houses both punishment and prophecy; In Dante’s "Inferno," Hades (as Hell) is structured by moral hierarchy; In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais,” Hades is transcended by poetic immortality; In W.H. Auden’s “The Sea and the Mirror,” Hades symbolizes psychological underworld; In modern poetry, Hades often represents depression, memory, or the unconscious.
Additional Notes
Hades, god of the underworld and the realm itself, symbolizes death, hidden wealth (Plouton), and inexorable transition; poets distinguish between Hades the place (neutral abode of shades) and later hellish conceptions—his abduction of Persephone structures seasonal myths, and his helm of invisibility evokes secrecy, the unconscious, or the unseen dimensions of existence.
Also Known As
Pluto of the Greeks Lord of the Underworld Wealth-Giver Pluto Sheol Underworld
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