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

Larvae

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

Malevolent spirits of the dead, restless and harmful, contrasted with benevolent Lares.

Detailed Definition
Larvae (or Lemures) were feared as vengeful ghosts haunting the living. In poetry, they appear in gothic or elegiac scenes to evoke guilt, unresolved trauma, or the consequences of impiety—often during nocturnal festivals like the Lemuria meant to appease them.
Example
Example in poetry:
Larvae, malevolent spirits of the dead, haunt nocturnal verse: "Larvae rattle chains in the moonless hour—flee, living ones!"; In Horace’s Epodes, they punish the wicked: "Larvae drag the oath-breaker through thorned paths"; A charm: "Garlic and hawthorn bar the Larvae’s path"; In ghost poetry: "The Larvae moan for rites denied—Feralia forgotten"; Symbol of guilt: "Your sins summon Larvae—no lock holds them."
Additional Notes
Larvae (or Lemures) were malevolent, restless dead—unlike the benevolent Manes; they were exorcised during the Lemuria festival (May 9, 11, 13) with midnight rites involving black beans and spitting; Ovid describes the paterfamilias performing these rites barefoot; they represent improper burial, untimely death, or ancestral wrath; poets use them in ghost stories, moral warnings, or psychological verse; they contrast sharply with the Lares, showing the Roman duality of ancestral spirits—protective or punitive based on ritual care.
Also Known As
restless ghosts harmful shades wandering dead
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