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

Mercury

Mythology
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

Roman messenger god, guide of souls, and patron of commerce and eloquence

Detailed Definition
Mercury (Hermes in Greek) is swift, cunning, and versatile, mediating between gods, humans, and the dead. In Roman poetry, especially Ovid, he embodies communication, trickery, and transition. Poets use Mercury to symbolize poetic inspiration, the fluidity of identity, or the passage between worlds—making him a frequent muse in lyric, satirical, and metaphysical verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
Mercury, messenger god, appears in Virgil’s Aeneid descending “on winged sandals” to command Aeneas; Ovid’s Metamorphoses shows Mercury lulling Argus to sleep with tales; Horace’s Odes praise Mercury as “inventor of the lyre and commerce”; In Lucretius, Mercury symbolizes eloquence and swift thought; Propertius calls Mercury “guide of stolen kisses”; In Roman hymns, Mercury carries souls to the underworld as psychopomp.
Additional Notes
Mercury (Greek Hermes) is messenger god, patron of commerce, eloquence, and trickery; appears in Virgil, Ovid, and Horace; symbolizes communication, transition, and cunning; useful for themes of travel, deception, or poetic inspiration; students should note his attributes: caduceus, winged sandals, and purse; as psychopomp, he guides souls to the underworld; his Roman festival (Mercuralia) involved sprinkling water for purification; he bridges divine and mortal realms.
Also Known As
Hermes Messenger God Psychopomp God of Eloquence
Skip to main content