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.

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

Lethe

Life And Death
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 river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology. Drinking from it causes souls to lose memory of earthly life.

Detailed Definition
Lethe is one of the rivers of the classical underworld, associated with forgetfulness. Souls who drink its waters lose memories of their former lives, allowing them to pass beyond earthly attachments or prepare for rebirth. In poetry, Lethe can represent the relief of oblivion, the horror of losing identity, or the merciful fading of grief. Poets often contrast its waters with remembrance, suggesting that memory preserves love and pain even as death invites a final forgetting.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Greek myth, Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in the underworld, whose waters erase memory; Dante's "Purgatorio" includes Lethe, where purified souls forget sin before entering Paradise; John Milton refers to Lethe in "Paradise Lost" as a place associated with oblivion and forgetfulness; A poet might describe sleep after bereavement as drinking from Lethe, temporarily dulling the pain of memory
Additional Notes
Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in the Greek underworld. It can represent release from painful memory, but also the loss of identity, history, and earthly attachments; contrast Mnemosyne, memory.
Other Meanings of “Lethe”
Also Known As
River Lethe River of Forgetfulness
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