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.

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 S

Sacred-word stanza

Form
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 stanza that incorporates or centers on words considered sacred or spiritually significant

Detailed Definition
A sacred-word stanza is a poetic stanza that centers on or prominently features words imbued with religious or spiritual significance—such as “grace,” “altar,” “amen,” or “cross”—often using typographical arrangement, thematic focus, or contextual reverence to highlight their sanctity; this form appears in devotional poetry by writers like George Herbert and John Donne, where language itself becomes an act of worship or theological reflection.
Example
Example in poetry:
George Herbert’s “The Altar” centers on sacred words like “altar,” “sacrifice,” and “heart” within its shaped stanza; John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet X” (“Death, be not proud”) uses the sacred concept of resurrection in its concluding couplet; The “Dies Irae” stanza invokes divine judgment with phrases like “Day of wrath, O day of mourning”; Emily Dickinson’s poem “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –” treats the word “Sabbath” as a sacred focal point within its compact stanza
Additional Notes
Sacred-word stanzas embed spiritually significant terms (e.g., “grace,” “cross,” “amen”) as focal points; often found in devotional poetry like that of George Herbert or John Donne; may employ typographical or structural emphasis to highlight the sacred term
Also Known As
Devotional stanza holy-word verse theopoetic stanza sacred refrain Mantric stanza
Skip to main content