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 L

Lacon

Literary Character
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 shepherd in Theocritus's Idylls, often participating in singing contests and representing competitive pastoral performance.

Detailed Definition
Lacon appears in Theocritus's bucolic poetry as a shepherd engaged in amoebaean singing, his character embodying the agonistic spirit of pastoral verse. The character represents the importance of competition in establishing poetic excellence, his contests demonstrating that pastoral song involves skill, wit, and the desire for recognition. Lacon enriches the pastoral tradition by emphasizing that bucolic poetry is performative and competitive, not merely descriptive or meditative.
Example
Example in poetry:
Lacon appears in Theocritus and later pastoral as a shepherd character; Poets use Lacon to represent Spartan or Laconian regional identity in pastoral; In pastoral tradition, Lacon embodies rustic simplicity with regional specificity; A poet might invoke Lacon when creating variety among shepherds; Lacon serves as a name suggesting particular geographical origins; The character adds regional authenticity to pastoral settings
Additional Notes
Lacon appears in Theocritus and later pastoral as a shepherd character, the name suggesting Spartan or Laconian origins. This regional identity brings associations of simplicity, toughness, and the distinctive character of Spartan culture. Poets use Lacon when incorporating regional Greek identities into pastoral, showing shepherds as members of specific ethnic or geographical communities rather than generic rustics. The character demonstrates pastoral poetry's attention to regional variation and cultural specificity within the Greek world.
Also Known As
Spartan shepherd laconic rustic terse youth
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