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

Phthisis

Medical 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 archaic medical term for pulmonary tuberculosis, historically associated with wasting away of the body. In literature it often symbolises slow decline and fragile beauty.

Detailed Definition
Phthisis was the classical Greek-derived term for pulmonary tuberculosis, widely used in medical and literary texts before the nineteenth century. The disease was characterised by wasting, chronic coughing, and gradual physical decline. Because it progressed slowly and often afflicted young adults, poets and novelists frequently associated phthisis with tragic beauty, sensitivity, and doomed love. Romantic and Victorian writers used the term to evoke fragility, spiritual refinement, and the melancholy awareness of mortality, making it a powerful metaphor for fading life and delicate suffering.
Example
Example in poetry:
The doctor diagnosed the cough as phthisis; Poets used phthisis as a technical term for consumption; She wasted away from pulmonary phthisis; The treatment for phthisis involved fresh air; He wrote of the decline caused by phthisis; Phthisis is an archaic medical term for TB.
Additional Notes
Phthisis is an archaic term for tuberculosis. Like consumption, it appears frequently in nineteenth century literature. The slow wasting of the body symbolised fragile beauty and tragic decline. Many romantic writers associated phthisis with artistic sensitivity and early death.
Also Known As
Consumption Pulmonary Tuberculosis
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