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 P

parlous

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

An adjective meaning dangerous, perilous, or precarious; also used to mean shrewd or cunning, often with ironic or archaic flavor.

Detailed Definition
"Parlous" is a contracted form of "perilous" that emerged in Middle English and gained popularity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Beyond its primary meaning of dangerous or hazardous, it developed secondary senses of extreme, shrewd, or remarkable, often used ironically or humorously. Shakespeare employed "parlous" to convey both genuine danger and exaggerated alarm, exploiting its compressed sound for comic or dramatic effect. The term appears in poetry and drama where archaic diction creates atmosphere or where monosyllabic intensity serves metrical needs. Its dual nature—both serious and potentially ironic—made it versatile for poets navigating between high tragedy and satirical commentary. The word's condensed form gives it forceful impact while maintaining the elevated register of its root word.
Example
Example in poetry:
The venture seems parlous risky to attempt; "We escaped that parlous situation barely"; Parlous means dangerous or precarious; The parlous state of the kingdom worried nobles; Parlous is contraction of perilous; Times grew parlous as war approached
Additional Notes
Parlous demonstrates phonetic reduction of "perilous" while developing distinct semantic overtones. The term can mean dangerous but often carries implications of cunning, cleverness, or being shrewdly aware of danger. Shakespeare uses it in both senses. The phonetic compression suggests colloquial origin despite literary usage. Related to "perilous" but semantically distinct. Essential for analyzing semantic drift, phonetic change creating new words, and how danger-vocabulary differs in nuance. The term sometimes appears in somewhat humorous contexts, suggesting danger that's manageable or exaggerated. Useful for discussing how sound change affects meaning, the relationship between "parlous" and "perilous" as doublets, and how archaic terms acquire specialized meanings distinct from their origins.
Also Known As
perilous dangerous dreadful alarming
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