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

Short-long-long-short hexameter

Meter
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 hexameter line built from antispastic feet (short-long-long-short), producing a syncopated, irregular metrical texture.

Detailed Definition
Short-long-long-short hexameter describes a six-foot line where each foot follows the pattern of one short (unstressed) syllable, two long (stressed) syllables, and a final short syllable; this complex meter is uncommon in English poetry but may appear in neoclassical or experimental verse seeking to emulate or adapt Greek or Latin quantitative prosody.
Example
Example in poetry:
Classical Latin hexameter rarely uses short-long-long-short throughout, but adapted examples include: "Under the greenwood tree / Who loves to lie with me..." (Shakespeare) loosely echoes the rhythm; Some experimental Victorian hexameters mimic this pattern for exotic effect; Modern imitations like "Waves crash and roll and sigh and sleep" stretch the form; In translation, Homer’s lines are sometimes rendered with this cadence for musicality
Additional Notes
Short-long-long-short hexameter: A six-foot line where each foot has the pattern: unstressed, stressed, stressed, unstressed; a highly complex and unusual metrical scheme.
Also Known As
Hexameter choriambic clipped six-foot line Antispastic hexameter
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