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 M

Masculine

Foot
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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 line ending in a stressed syllable, conforming strictly to the expected metrical count

Explore this topic in depth (1)

Rhyme — Rhyme is more than a matching sound at the ends of lines. This guide explores how poets use rhyme to organise language, create expectation, make connections between words and alter what we hear when a poem is read or sung.

Detailed Definition
Masculine describes a line ending on a stressed syllable, matching the final beat of the prevailing meter—most commonly in iambic or trochaic lines; this strong, definitive closure is the default in English poetry, providing rhythmic stability and rhetorical emphasis, and contrasts with feminine endings to create subtle tonal and structural variety.
Example
Example in poetry:
A masculine ending concludes a line on a stressed syllable, as in Shakespeare: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (though this line is actually feminine—better example: “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” is feminine; a true masculine: “But thy eternal summer shall not fade”); Milton’s “Paradise Lost”: “Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit”; Most iambic pentameter lines in heroic couplets end masculinely; Masculine rhyme pairs like “light”/“night” are single-syllable; The term denotes rhythmic and rhyming finality; Masculine endings provide strong closure in narrative verse.
Additional Notes
Masculine: A line ending on a stressed (or long) syllable, typical in English iambic pentameter and classical hexameter; forms the basis of “masculine rhyme” (single-syllable rhyme); contrast with feminine endings to understand rhyme schemes and metrical closure.
Also Known As
Masculine ending Masculine rhyme
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