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

Leda

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

Spartan queen seduced by Zeus in swan form; mother of Helen and Clytemnestra, a frequent symbol of divine violation and beauty.

Detailed Definition
Leda’s union with Zeus produced Helen and Clytemnestra (or Pollux and Castor). The myth explores divine violation and the birth of catastrophic beauty. Poets, like Yeats in “Leda and the Swan,” reference her to examine power, consent, and the violent origins of historical turning points.
Example
Example in poetry:
Leda appears in mythological poetry: "Leda yields to swan’s wings— / Zeus in feathers, fate in down, / and history begins"; In feminist verse, she questions consent: "Did she choose the swan, / or was choice another feather / plucked by gods?"; Poets use her to explore violent origins: "From that encounter, Helen— / and Troy’s thousand ships, / all launched from Leda’s bed"; She symbolizes the collision of divine and human: "Gods take what they want— / Leda’s body, the first page / of war’s bloody book"; In modern poetry, she reclaims agency: "Leda watched the swan fly off— / then combed her hair, / and built a life from the wreckage"; Contemporary poets focus on aftermath: "After Zeus left, / Leda gathered her eggs— / two mortal, two divine"
Additional Notes
Leda, the Spartan queen seduced (or assaulted) by Zeus in the form of a swan, is the mother of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. Her myth—especially as rendered in Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan”—explores divine violation, the birth of catastrophic beauty, and the violent origins of historical turning points. In poetry, Leda symbolizes the collision of mortal and divine, the ambiguity of consent, and the far-reaching consequences of a single moment. When using Leda, consider feminist reinterpretations that center her experience rather than Zeus’s power. Related concepts include theoxeny (hospitality to gods), metamorphosis, and the Trojan War cycle; her story pairs with themes of fate, agency, and the body as a site of history.
Also Known As
The Swan Queen Mother of Helen Consort of Zeus in Avian Form
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