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

lea

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

An open field, meadow, or pasture; grassland used for grazing or growing hay, especially in pastoral or rural settings.

Detailed Definition
"Lea" (also "ley") derives from Old English "lēah" (meadow, clearing), referring to open grassland, meadows, or pastures. Pastoral poetry extensively employed it when depicting rural landscapes, agricultural life, and idealized countryside. The term carries associations with peace, fertility, and agrarian virtue—leas were productive, pleasant spaces contrasting with wild forests or urban corruption. Poets valued "lea" for its brevity and its pastoral associations, making it essential vocabulary for rural and nature poetry. Its appearance often signaled conventional pastoral themes—shepherds in leas, flocks grazing leas, lovers meeting in leas. The word's antiquity and literary associations distinguished it from prosaic "field" or "meadow," elevating rural description through archaic diction. Its use connected poems to pastoral tradition extending from classical through medieval to modern literature celebrating rural life and natural beauty. The term efficiently evokes entire pastoral tradition through single archaic word.
Example
Example in poetry:
The shepherd led his flock across the lea; "Upon the verdant lea the cattle grazed"; Lea means a meadow or field of grass; Spring flowers bloomed upon the sunny lea; The village lea was common grazing land; Knights jousted on the level lea
Additional Notes
Lea appears throughout pastoral poetry, rural descriptions, and idealized countryside representations. The term's specificity (open grassland, meadow) distinguishes it from generic "field," suggesting pastoral peace and agricultural plenty. Related to "ley" (variant) and conceptually to pastoral meadow imagery. Essential for analyzing pastoral genre, idealized nature representation, and how literature constructs rural spaces. The term appears in titles and settings of pastoral poetry, signaling genre expectations. Useful for discussing how specific landscape vocabulary creates atmosphere, the pastoral tradition's construction of countryside, and differences between working agricultural land and idealized natural space. The term's poetic associations distinguish it from prosaic "field" or "meadow," carrying pastoral literary tradition's weight.
Also Known As
meadow field pasture grassland fallow
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