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

Lilith

Biblical
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

Mythical first wife of Adam, often depicted as a demon or seductress

Detailed Definition
Lilith originates in Jewish folklore as Adam’s first wife who refused subservience and was replaced by Eve; later traditions cast her as a night demon who preys on infants and seduces men. Though not canonical in the Bible, she appears in mystical and poetic texts as a symbol of female independence, dangerous sexuality, or primal chaos. Modern poetry often reclaims Lilith as a feminist icon of rebellion and autonomy.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “The Witch of Atlas,” Shelley calls Lilith “the first of women”; George MacDonald’s Lilith portrays her as a dark, redemptive figure; In “Lilith,” Dante Gabriel Rossetti writes, “She waits for man’s last step”; Modern poets like Adrienne Rich reclaim Lilith as a feminist symbol: “She refused to lie beneath”; In Jewish mystical poetry, Lilith is “the night-hag who steals children”; Sylvia Plath references Lilith’s “black hair” and independence in “Lady Lazarus” as a figure of resurrection and defiance.
Additional Notes
Lilith originates in Mesopotamian demonology and Jewish folklore as Adam’s first wife who refused subservience, later becoming a night demon. Though absent from canonical scripture, she appears in the Alphabet of Ben Sira and Kabbalah. In poetry, she evolved from a symbol of dangerous female sexuality to a feminist icon of autonomy (e.g., in Rich, Plath, and Duffy). Rossetti’s “Body’s Beauty” contrasts her with Helen as a femme fatale. Students should trace her transformation across eras: medieval demon, Romantic seductress, modern rebel. Useful in gender studies, myth revisionism, and discussions of the monstrous feminine. Related terms: Eve, succubus, feminist reclamation.
Also Known As
First Wife of Adam Night Demon Seductress of Eden Queen of the Lilim Black Moon Lilith
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