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

hurdle

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 portable rectangular frame of woven branches or slats used as a temporary fence for penning livestock, especially sheep.

Detailed Definition
Hurdle derives from Old English "hyrdel" and describes the lightweight, movable fencing panels woven from hazel rods or sawn timber that shepherds used to create temporary enclosures for sheep on arable land, allowing them to graze and fertilize specific areas. In poetry hurdles evoke the shepherd's craft and the intelligence of traditional land management—the careful organization of animals across the landscape. They also appear in athletic contexts as obstacles to be jumped, and this secondary meaning enriches the metaphorical range available to poets. The fragility and portability of hurdles—so different from permanent stone walls or hedges—makes them images of temporary order, the farmer's imposition of structure on an inherently unruly landscape that must constantly be reasserted.
Example
Example in poetry:
The hurdle as the shepherd's primary tool of portable enclosure — the woven hazel panel that could be carried to any part of the farm and erected quickly into a temporary pen — represents the intelligence and flexibility of traditional pastoral management; A poet might write "he built the fold from hurdles as his father had, each panel lifted and slotted into the next, the circle of woven hazel rising against the night like a small completed argument"; In athletic poetry the hurdle race provides a different and energetic set of images — the obstacle to be jumped, the barrier that tests speed and agility — and poets can move between the agricultural and athletic meanings for ironic or surprising effect; The fragility of the hurdle — woven from flexible rods rather than cut from solid timber — makes it an image of temporary order, the fence that must be actively maintained and that cannot resist determined pressure for long; The craft of hurdle-making — the skilled weaving of hazel rods by the hurdle-maker, a specialist whose skill was essential to every sheep farm — appears in poems about traditional crafts and their disappearance, the specific knowledge required to make a good hurdle now largely lost; In pastoral elegies the dismantled hurdle — the portable fence packed away at the end of the season, the temporary enclosure dissolved back into its component parts — serves as an image of the impermanence of all pastoral order.
Additional Notes
Hurdle presents a productive case of a word with two equally vital meanings that create unexpected poetic opportunities through their juxtaposition. The agricultural hurdle (the woven panel fence) and the athletic hurdle (the barrier to be jumped in a race) share the same word, and poets aware of both can create ironic or illuminating effects by moving between them. Students should note that the athletic hurdle derived its name from the agricultural implement — the original hurdles in early racing were probably actual farm hurdles — and this historical connection is available as a metaphor: the obstacles in athletic life named for the portable fences of the shepherd's craft. The craft of hurdle-making — the skilled weaving of hazel or willow rods into portable panels — is one of the traditional woodland crafts whose disappearance has been mourned in poems about lost rural skills. The New Forest and other wood-pasture regions were centers of hurdle-making, and the craft's demands on specific woodland management (regular coppiced hazel for rods) connected it directly to the management of the wider landscape. Related terms: fold, pen, coppice, holt, shaw.
Also Known As
wattle fold-hurdle sheep-hurdle wattle-fence Barricade
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