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

Leander

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

Greek mythological figure who drowned swimming the Hellespont nightly to reach his lover Hero, whose suicide followed his death.

Detailed Definition
Leander drowned during a storm while swimming to Hero, who then killed herself. Their tragic romance, celebrated by Musaeus and later poets, symbolizes devoted love and fatal passion. Poets invoke Leander to explore themes of longing, risk, and the sea as both connector and destroyer.
Example
Example in poetry:
Musaeus’s Hero and Leander tells of Leander’s nightly swim and tragic drowning; Ovid’s Heroides includes a letter from Hero to Leander; In Marlowe’s poem, Leander embodies passionate, doomed love; Later Elizabethan sonnets use him as a symbol of erotic devotion; In allegory, Leander represents the soul’s perilous journey toward divine love.
Additional Notes
Leander drowns swimming to Hero; his story (Musaeus, Marlowe) epitomizes passionate, fatal love. Students should analyze the Hellespont as both barrier and conduit, and the lamp as fragile hope. Their myth becomes a Renaissance touchstone for erotic devotion and tragic error. Related: Hero, Hellespont, swimming motifs.
Also Known As
Leander the Swimmer Lover of Hero Hellespont Diver Tragic Torch-Follower
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