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

Longing

Psychology
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

A wistful, sometimes painful desire for something absent; in poetry, it creates poignant tension, expressing the ache of memory, the ideal, or a beloved who is out of reach.

Detailed Definition
Longing is poetry's most persistent note—for a lover, a homeland, a lost self, or the divine. It appears through repetitive structures, images of distance (horizons, stars, seas), and melancholic tone. Poets like Neruda or Sappho make longing palpable, celebrating its ache. Longing bridges absence and presence, turning lack into creative force. It invites readers to share the speaker's desire, making the unfulfilled a source of beauty and meaning.
Example
Example in poetry:
Longing in Pablo Neruda's love poems where longing is a constant theme; In Emily Dickinson's "Longing," the speaker envies seas and hills; In Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry, longing is a spiritual force; In Sappho's fragments, longing is the central emotion; In "The Song of Despair," Neruda expresses longing for lost love; In romantic poetry, longing often bridges absence and presence.
Additional Notes
Longing is poetry's most persistent note—for a lover, a homeland, a lost self, or the divine—appearing through repetitive structures, images of distance, and melancholic tone. In teaching, distinguish longing from desire: longing implies wistful yearning for something distant, while desire is more immediate and craving-driven. Poets like Neruda or Sappho make longing palpable, celebrating its ache. Longing bridges absence and presence, turning lack into creative force. Students should examine how poets use imagery of horizons, stars, seas, and repeated refrains to convey longing's persistent ache.
Also Known As
Yearning craving desire pining nostalgia homesickness cumha desiderium Envy fonn Nostalgic Wish Wistful wistlessness
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