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 M

mast

Archaic Terms
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 fallen fruit of forest trees, especially beech, oak, and chestnut, used as food for pigs; a crucial resource of the medieval forest economy.

Detailed Definition
Mast derives from Old English "maest" and describes the accumulated nuts and fruits that fall from trees in autumn—primarily acorns, beech mast, and chestnuts—which were the traditional food on which pigs were fattened in the autumn forest. The practice of turning pigs loose to feed on mast (pannage) was an important right in the medieval forest economy and shaped the management of woodland across Britain. In poetry mast evokes the autumnal woodland floor, the abundance of falling fruit, and the intimate relationship between forest trees and domestic animals. It also connects to the mythology of a pre-agricultural golden age when humans themselves fed on the spontaneous abundance of the forest. The abundance of mast in a given year was a significant event, and the forest's provision of this resource free of cultivation suggests a natural generosity prior to human labor.
Example
Example in poetry:
The mast-fall of autumn — the year's acorns and beech nuts lying thick under the trees — was one of the most significant events in the medieval agricultural calendar, determining how many pigs could be fattened for winter slaughter; A poet might write "the mast lay deep under the beeches in October, a brown luxury, the trees' annual generosity to the pigs that rootled through it, unhurried and content"; In pastoral poetry mast represents the spontaneous abundance of the woodland — the forest feeding animals without human cultivation, the trees offering their fruit freely as if in memory of a golden age before agriculture; The imagery of pigs in woodland feeding on mast is one of the characteristic images of medieval autumn in the illustrated calendar manuscripts, and poets who draw on this tradition invoke the specific sensory world of that seasonal practice; The quantity of mast in any given year was unpredictable — a mast year (a year of heavy nut production) was a gift, a poor year a hardship — and this variability gives mast a quality of contingent abundance, the gift that cannot be counted on but transforms a year when it arrives; In poems about the relationship between woodland and farm, mast represents the forest's contribution to the agricultural economy — the protein that the woodland provides freely to those with rights of pannage, the wild supplement to cultivated food.
Additional Notes
Mast is important for students primarily because of its specific role in the medieval forest economy, which is less familiar to modern readers than the arable and pastoral components of traditional agriculture. Students should understand that the forest was not simply wilderness but a managed resource governed by elaborate legal arrangements (forest law), and that the right of pannage — turning pigs into the forest to feed on mast — was a crucial component of the agricultural economy in woodland areas. The autumn mast-fall was a significant event in the farming calendar, determining how many pigs could be fattened economically for winter slaughter. Students should distinguish between the different types of mast: beech mast (small, triangular nuts, very rich in oil), acorns (the most important and abundant), sweet chestnuts, and — in some classifications — holly berries and other woodland fruits. The concept of a "mast year" — the irregular years of unusually heavy nut production that occur in many tree species — is important for understanding the variability of this resource. Students interested in medieval forest law should research the court of the Verderers and the institution of the pannage season. Related terms: pannage, turbary, estovers, verderer, drove.
Also Known As
pannage beech-mast acorn-mast forest nuts
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