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

Melancholy

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 pensive, reflective sadness, often tinged with nostalgia; in poetry, it lends a mood of introspective longing, frequently used in elegiac or meditative verse to explore loss and memory.

Detailed Definition
Melancholy pervades poetry as a refined, contemplative sadness—not acute grief but a habitual tone. It appears through twilight, ruins, and autumn images, with meditative rhythm. Poets like Keats or Rilke elevate melancholy to aesthetic and philosophical depth, linking it to beauty and impermanence. Melancholy fosters introspection, making the reader linger on loss and longing, and serves as a bridge to the sublime.
Example
Example in poetry:
Melancholy in John Keats' "Ode on Melancholy" where melancholy is aestheticized; In Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," melancholy pervades; In Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry, melancholy is a reflective state; In Emily Dickinson's poetry, melancholy is a frequent tone; In Romantic poetry, melancholy is often linked to beauty and impermanence; In "The Darkling Thrush," Hardy's melancholy is bleak.
Additional Notes
Melancholy pervades poetry as a refined, contemplative sadness—not acute grief but a habitual tone—appearing through twilight, ruins, and autumn images with meditative rhythm. In teaching, distinguish melancholy from depression: melancholy is reflective sadness, while depression is a clinical state. Poets like Keats or Rilke elevate melancholy to aesthetic and philosophical depth, linking it to beauty and impermanence. Melancholy fosters introspection, making readers linger on loss and longing. Students should examine how poets use elegiac tone, imagery of decay, and slow rhythm to convey melancholy's brooding beauty.
Other Meanings of “Melancholy”
Also Known As
Sadness gloom depression sorrow blues spleen
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