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

Laud

Technique
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 formal poem of praise, often ceremonial, celebrating a person, event, or ideal with elevated diction and structure.

Detailed Definition
A laud is a poetic encomium that extols a person, event, or ideal, typically using elevated diction and traditional forms. Found in odes, panegyrics, and religious verse, lauds serve communal or ritual functions—honoring heroes, saints, or civic virtues—and reflect poetry’s ancient role in affirming cultural values and collective memory.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pindar’s Olympian Odes laud victorious athletes with elevated diction and mythic allusions; Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” lauds the Sidney estate as a model of virtue and hospitality; Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” lauds Abraham Lincoln as a fallen hero; A contemporary laud might read: “O poet of the people’s voice, / Your lines give silenced souls a choice”; Another example: “For Maya Angelou, whose words still rise / Like doves against indifferent skies.”
Additional Notes
A laud is a formal poem of praise, often elevated in diction and structure, celebrating individuals, virtues, or divine figures; rooted in classical encomium and Pindaric odes, it appears in Renaissance panegyrics and modern tributes; effective lauds balance specificity with universality—avoiding flattery through concrete imagery and emotional sincerity; related forms include the epithalamion (wedding praise) and elegy (which may include laudatory elements); students should study how tone, metaphor, and rhythm contribute to dignified celebration without sentimentality.
Also Known As
Encomium Panegyric Eulogy (in poetic context)
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