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

Latium

Historical Location
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

The ancient region of west-central Italy containing Rome, the heartland of Roman civilization and mythology

Detailed Definition
Latium was the homeland of the Latins, where Aeneas settled and Rome was founded. It includes the Alban Hills and sacred groves. In poetry, Latium symbolizes Roman origins, pastoral simplicity (as in Virgil’s Eclogues), and the cradle of empire—often invoked to ground imperial grandeur in rustic beginnings or to contrast urban corruption with ancestral virtue.
Example
Example in poetry:
Virgil’s Aeneid presents Latium as the destined homeland of Trojan refugees and future Rome; Ovid’s Fasti roots Roman festivals in Latium’s pastoral and mythic landscape; Renaissance poets celebrate Latium as the cradle of Latin language and law; Enlightenment verse uses Latium to contrast ancient virtue with modern decadence; Modern Italian poetry reclaims Latium as a regional identity beyond imperial Rome.
Additional Notes
Latium, the region surrounding Rome, is the mythic and historical heartland of Roman identity. It includes the Alban Hills, the Tiber River, and cities like Alba Longa and Lavinium. In Roman poetry, Latium represents ancestral virtue, agricultural simplicity (mos maiorum), and the sacred geography of foundation myths. Virgil’s Aeneid frames Aeneas’s arrival in Latium as the fulfillment of destiny. For students, Latium exemplifies how regional identity underpins national epic.
Also Known As
Lazio
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