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 S

scythe

Tools
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 scythe is a long-handled agricultural tool with a broad curved blade, used to mow grass or reap crops.

Detailed Definition
The scythe is swung in wide, rhythmic arcs to cut grass, hay, or grain close to the ground. Before mechanised harvesting, it was a defining tool of seasonal rural labour. In poetry it is inseparable from images of harvest, time, and death, particularly through the traditional figure of the reaper. Yet it can also evoke dawn work, bodily skill, abundance, and the ordered renewal of fields. Its sweeping blade joins beauty and menace, making each cut both an ending and part of a sustaining cycle.
Example
Example in poetry:
The reaper swung the scythe through the meadow in broad, shining arcs; In poetry, the scythe commonly symbolises death, time, and the gathering of lives at maturity; Its rhythmic sweep can also evoke skilled harvest labour rather than menace; The crescent blade may be compared to a moon moving close to the earth.
Additional Notes
The scythe requires a broad, rhythmic swing and is traditionally used for mowing grass or harvesting grain. Its association with the figure of Death or Father Time is deeply established, but poems may also emphasise skilled labour, dawn, abundance, and seasonal renewal. The curved blade is often compared with the crescent moon. Students should not assume every scythe is purely ominous. Related terms include sickle, reaping, harvest, hay, mower, blade, crescent, death, time, labour, rhythm, fertility, completion, and cyclical renewal.
Other Meanings of “scythe”
Also Known As
Harvesting Blade Grain Scythe Reaping Tool reaper
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